[DVaut1]

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There are very few hard and fast rules on this site, but one of them has always been that everyone on this site has a right to participate in any of the forums without being personally insulted or personally disrespected.

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This seems rather subjective; if I claim Koran isn't the word of God, and I've personally insulted a Muslim, is that grounds for a reprimand from the moderator? What if I make a similar claim about the New Testament; can a Christian report me to a moderator?

Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding this. I agree there's a need for forum moderation, but 'personal insult' seems like an awfully poor standard, particularly in the Politics Forum where tensions run high and many legitimate discussions could be construed as insulting.



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You also cannot refer to one as a “stubborn mule who cannot see past the end of his wet little nose”. This latter case is made especially egregious when it is said about a highly respected member of this community, during an argument for which the offended party is a world class authority, who knows more about the topic under discussion than the insulter could ever hope to understand in his lifetime.

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I really have no idea about the post being referenced here, but from what I’m reading here, I’m somewhat wary.

I'm particularly concerned about the subjectivism here; is calling a less-respected member of the community a ‘stubborn mule’ more acceptable than calling a well-respected member one? It seems to me some of the more ‘disrespected’ members of the community are the posters who need their expression most protected by the moderators, and not vice versa; I think it’s rather effortless for 2+2 to create posting standards in which the more popular, respected members of the community are given deference in conflicts against unknown or less respected members. A more equitable standard would seem to be in one in which newer/older, popular/unpopular, and respected/disrespected posters are all held to the same standard, regardless of their standing in the community. Perhaps that’s the standard which exists now. In which case, it seems rather irrelevant to site that the poster in question here is ‘highly respect’ and only might only add fuel to the fire that unfair reverence is being given to veteran/popular members of the community.

Secondly, and somewhat related, I’m all for giving authorities their due esteem. But claiming the offended party is a “world class authority, who knows more about the topic under discussion than the insulter could ever hope to understand in his lifetime” also reeks of the subjectivism I referred to earlier. Authorities ought not to be given special protections by the moderators.


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However, the danger of this situation is what if the world class authority were the type of person whom we might risk losing as a contributor because of this offense? I will do whatever is in my power to ensure that doesn’t happen.

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Again, this seems patently unfair. Can a world class authority legitimately take offense if someone with much less knowledge disagrees with them? I think they can; it’s certainly a personal affront to the time, energy, and resources the world class authority has put into studying whatever subject their expertise lies in. But authority ought to be challenged; and challenging authority is almost always offensive to the authority, and well it should be.

If you take nothing else away from my post here, realize that I’m standing in objection to “taking offense”, or the preventing of such offenses being taken, as a standard of behavior on this forum. Standards such as that are doomed to fail, IMO, because they’re so completely arbitrary. If the world class authority is so clearly correct, the (respectful) scorn and disapproval of fellow members of the community against the uninformed party who is in the wrong is punishment enough.

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Now that doesn't mean that you can’t insult or disrespect people’s ideas or arguments. Feel free to insult and disrespect those all you want. It is only when one insults not ideas or arguments but individual users that it is clearly over the line.

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Again, there’s a real fine line here, and I don’t feel the moderators (or any human, for that matter) is fit to judge this standard. I imagine some ideologues on both sides feel that disrespecting an idea or an argument they make/have constitutes a personal insult to them. I can’t see the enforcement of this as anything other than arbitrary and hopelessly selective.

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When I used to inspect software, we had a simple rule. When we found an error, we would say "the program is doing this [incredibly stupid thing] here". That was fine. We could not say "the author of this program is an idiot because of this error he made here". See the difference? That's all I'm talking about here.

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I see the difference; but if the author of the program complains that calling his work (a computer program) stupid is somewhat akin to calling him stupid, and therefore you insulted him (as he’s a professional programmer who’s life’s work has gone into programming software), and that you should stop criticizing his work – I’d think he had a point. Which is why I think things such as “offense”, “criticism of authority”, and “insulting” are rather arbitrary standards here.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to prevent overly-insulting, mean-spirited, cruel, pointless posts that do nothing but inflame – but mere insult, even if the insulted party is a world class authority, ought not to warrant punishment.

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This leaves plenty of leeway for vicious attacks on one's ideology and thought processes. The only attacks it excludes are ones which simply attach a negative label to someone in lieu of debating his ideas. These serve no purpose to anyone, and are the product of weak minds and weak arguments. We don’t lose a thing by disallowing this type of attack.

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Paying attention to what I bolded, this again smacks of subjectiveness. If I call David Duke a racist (a former Klan leader), this is clearly a negative label and contains absolutely no debate of his ideas; yet I find it perfectly legitimate and suitable for this board. What if I call Trent Lott, or Robert Byrd, a racist? Certainly, that’s much more debatable (I personally don’t think it’s true, and I think it’s patently unfair to both Byrd and Lott) – but I find it’s a perfectly legitimate comment to make, and one I would take no action to prevent.

Imagine that, hypothetically, I call Robert Byrd a racist – and as I said, I think this is perfectly legitimate (and unfair at the same time; as I said, I don’t think Byrd is a racist) – and now Poster XYZ comes to Byrd’s defense; I think it’s clearly legitimate to call Poster XYZ a racist, too – certainly I’d label anyone who came to defend David Duke a racist.

Political discourse is highly situation-dependent. While I don’t think labels are particularly useful, they can facilitate discussion, and labeling someone doesn’t necessarily indicate either weak minds or weak arguments, IMO.

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We are not going to have a legal document that defines a personal insult.

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I don’t think personal insults ought to be a standard here. But if it is going to become the standard, I think we ought to have some parameters for what constitutes an insult – but I think the moderators are hesitant to produce such a document because they’re aware it’s impracticable; ‘insult’ is so subjective that no document could fully encompass what an insult is, who can feel insulted, what can be viewed as insulting, etc. The same reasons that I doubt moderators can produce a document which define what constitutes ‘insulting’ is the same reason I think it fails miserably as a standard of behavior.