Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting banter

[newellcr]

Can we improve the vocabulary and stop the personal attacks, please? I am certain that there is another user forum for disgusting banter and the trading of insults. This one is the Early Retirement Forum.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[unclemick]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Why?

Let each poster hang himself by his own post.

Betcha Bill Gates was a lot more careful after the Microsoft trial. I'm sure there are other examples.

 

[hocus]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

I'm with you, newellcr.

Early retirement is a wonderful issue that all sorts of people are interested in. The more who participate, the more we all learn.

There are large numbers who are turned-off by the sort of thing you make reference to above. That sort of stuff causes us to lose posters, which means we lose access to their Retire Early insights too.

There is nothing worth saying that cannot be said without resorting to the sort of thing you make reference to above. We should want the discussions to serve a constructive purpose, and the sort of thing you refer to above never helps.

I favor the uncompromised expression of a wide diversity of viewpoints. But I believe that reasonable limits on the manner in which those viewpoints are put forward are needed to insure that it is indeed reasoned viewpoints that are being exchanged and not just rude animal noises.

 

[newellcr]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

UncleMick,

***** touches on the reason why I am not entirely for letting the posters hang themselves or to just let it burn out. It reflects poorly on the forum. That type of behavior discourages a lot of folks from posting and limits the pool of ideas.

Debate, disagree, state your opposing viewpoint, but please, let's use some restraint.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Jarhead*]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

UncleMick,

***** touches on the reason why I am not entirely for letting the posters hang themselves or to just let it burn out.  It reflects poorly on the forum.  That type of behavior discourages a lot of folks from posting and limits the pool of ideas.  

Debate, disagree, state your opposing viewpoint, but please, let's use some restraint.  

Thanks,

Chris

Newcaller: In a perfect world, your take on posting would make sense.
Operating in our environment, UncleMick is absolutely correct. Do you honestly think a plea for restraint would do any good.
UncleMick has been around the park a few times, and give somebody enough rope, and they will eventually hang themselves.
A little more experience on this board, and you will get a feel of who is worth listening to, and who is not.
Be selective.

 

[laurence]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

As one guilty of getting in the gutter more than once, I'm still learning the ropes of "message boarding" myself. As new people find the board, they'll either settle down (like I hope to) or flame out and leave (like someone just did). One thing is for sure, I haven't found any place on the web with as much information/people with information on retirement all in one place. It's well worth the lumps!

 

[hocus]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

One thing is for sure, I haven't found any place on the web with as much information/people with information on retirement all in one place.  It's well worth the lumps!

I very much agree, laurencewill. This is an amazing resource.

 

[Nords]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Can we improve the vocabulary and stop the personal attacks, please?  I am certain that there is another user forum for disgusting banter and the trading of insults.  This one is the Early Retirement Forum. Thanks, Chris

Don't feed the trolls and, pending an "Ignore Poster" feature on this software, do your best to skip over their posts.

They'll eventually flame out & depart on their own-- although I'm afraid we can't do anything about "disgusting banter" & TH...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

I'm afraid we can't do anything about "disgusting banter" & TH...

Unfortunately, the disgusting banter may be one of my better characteristics...

 

[unclemick]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Hmmm

Is 'blow me' disgusting or banter - or a little of both.

I sorta got to like that one - especially with some creative smileys.

 

[sgeeeee]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Hmmm

Is 'blow me' disgusting or banter - or a little of both.

I sorta got to like that one - especially with some creative smileys.

Oh . . . Blow me.

 

[newellcr]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

"Operating in our environment, UncleMick is absolutely correct. Do you honestly think a plea for restraint would do any good."

Absolutely, you don't? We make our own environment here with every post. This is a group of reasonable adults with life experience and the interest to participate in a group setting. These life experiences have made some of the membership a little gamey. Great, no problem. Can we try to not treat this place as a toilet? Or maybe to discourage treating this place like a toilet?

Kind Regards,

Chris

 

[hocus]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Thanks for sticking your neck out, newellcr. I think you are right on.

You never hear complaints from the posters who just walk away. I am confident that we have been hurt by this stuff before, and if we fail to react in any way to extreme abuses when they occur, we will be hurt by it again in the future.

There are some hard calls in board administration, to be sure. It's a mistake to over-react and try to rein in people who are just letting off steam. But it is necessary to draw a line somewhere. There's room for reasoned disagreement as to where the line should be drawn, but all I hear you saying is that there is some stuff that clearly crosses it. And I think you are right on re that one.

 

[grumpy]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

I have participated on this board for a while now, both pre and post-ER. Although I still check for new messages most days, I am finding less and less worthwhile content and more and more pointless arguing, name callling, and disrespect of other's ideas.

I guess I may be one who will eventually drop out unless I can find more of interest and value here.

Grumpy

 

[Eagle43]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

I look forward to reading the posts here. I've been nailed a couple of time; and ignored a couple of times. So what? Anyone who's too timid to post because of possible return fire needs to move on. Don't dish it out if you can't take it. BTW, if they're really scared, then they can emit their breathtaking, intellectual, and sophisticated opinions as a Guest.

"Blow me" doesn't bother me; I have heard and said worse. Go take a flying ****, or stick it where the sun doesn't shine ... now that's serious.

 

[retire@40]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

I posted before about how the culture here parallels a boxing match. I have nothing against two or more members duking it out as hard as they want to go at each other on a topic, as long as it’s done in a professional and dare I say “classy” way.

But I agree, let’s keep the bad language and personal attacks out so that we could all be comfortable enough to have kids peeking over our shoulders as we are reading these posts.

Let’s be more like Muhammad Alis and less like Mike Tysons.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Granted this place can be a little "clubby" at times given the core group of people that have been together here for a long time. The whole 'dryer sheet' thing can be a little confusing at first, and I imagine most people might not realize that "blow me" is (usually) a term of endearment.

Granted also that almost any on-line discussions on this or any other site involving the usual 3rd rail topics such as religion, politics, gun control, abortion etc also run amok. For some reason our discussions involving sex work out ok.

Other than that, the only recent really unpleasant discussion around here is the one we're focused on most immediately...dear Ed. Lets capsulate that: Ed started off ok, minus some diction problems and a little trouble with the english language; I dont think anyone was too quick to fault him for that. He followed that up with a series of face-slapping posts to a number of members regarding the above mentioned 3rd rail topics. I think Ed was actually at least 2 people, supported by the very different posting styles and Dory's notice that his posts came from 10 different IPs on 2 different ISP's. I also firmly believe he was the author of the deleted fake "cut-throat" post. That he never protested someone else posting under his alias tells me he knows the other poster(s).

But lets remember, although most of the post has been deleted, the flames came first from Ed. I'll acknowledge that after 3 days of listening to 'blacks this, liberals that, gay everything else' that I engaged him and made him light his own head on fire. Whether that was the best course of action or to simply let him fade away is debatable. If I'm sitting in a nice country club with my friends and some lout starts blasting away like Ed did, I'm giving him the bums rush without hesitation. Lets face it - when JG decides you've taken a turn a little too far to the right, you've gone around the bend...

As far as what this place is and isnt, I think its what you want to make of it. Read what you want to read and pass by the stuff you dont find valuable. I dont see the excessive "offense", in fact I've stopped participating in a lot of boards because it was uncontrolled wild west non stop three stooges eye gouging. About the only time we have problems here is if someone shows up as a 'guest' to commit mayhem, the troll decides to go on his usual quarterly rampage, or someone brings up mortgages.

Dory seems to have solved the 'guest posting' problem. It looks like almost everybody knows the trolls routine by now. Seems like SG and I are done with our mortgage debates.

A shortage of useful information here? Wow. I find something useful here every day, even if its just getting a sanity check on something thats going on or getting 5 different opinions on something.

While I understand Chris's issue and his plea, unless we agree and elect to not bring up any 3rd rail issues that might inflame any member of the community, and institute moderation influence to remove any of those when posted, I'm not sure what else can or needs to be done. Moderation in and of itself can be a whole can of worms. As far as the 'banter', community standards vary wildly and I doubt you can come up with guidelines for posting that someone, somewhere wont find objectionable. Make everything suitable for a child to read? I think thats laudable, but pretty darn improbable.

Lastly, any issue the troll throws his weight behind should be suspect. The guy lives to divide and create dissension, and all he's doing here is trying to fan some flames.

I vote we settle down, put Ed and his various problems behind us, and stroll on.

 

[Martha]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

I find something useful here every day, even if its just getting a sanity check on something thats going on or getting 5 different opinions on something.

Me to. Even the jokes. The "3rd rail" iisues tend to wind me and most everyone else up, but for the most part we have been relatively polite in discussing them, until the Ed situation.

I vote we settle down, put Ed and his various problems behind us, and stroll on.

I second that.

Dory, you gave Charlie/Chuck 500 "curtesy" posts when his problem was resolved. Maybe John Galt should get 3000?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

You do realize that I would then have to quickly post 200 bad jokes to catch back up to #1 poster again...?

 

[Nords]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

This is a group of reasonable adults with life experience and the interest to participate in a group setting.

Actually we're all a bunch of dogs, but that's the great thing about the Internet!

 

[hocus]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Read what you want to read and pass by the stuff you dont find valuable.

You talk the talk, TH. But you don't walk the walk.

 

[newellcr]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Thanks to all for giving this some thought.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

Read what you want to read and pass by the stuff you dont find valuable.

You talk the talk, TH. But you don't walk the walk.

As usual, your translation filters are out of whack. I didnt say "suffer the troll".

 

[hocus]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

This guy who left may have blown up all on his own has you followed your own "live and let live" advice, TH. That's not what you say in your post above that you did. You say that you went about trying to get him to blow. Now we will never know whether he would have blown on his own without your assistance.

This fits a pattern with you. You did the same with SalaryGuru. He didbn't blow, so he's still here. If he had, SalaryGuru would be lost to us too. Why? Because TH decided he didn't want SalaryGuru around. That doesn't sound like "live and let live" to me.

SalaryGuru says that you did the same with Ted, who has also left us. I wasn't here then, so I don't know. But I don't dismiss the claim out of hand, given what I do know about your record.

I know for a fact that you have followed me around from thread to thread trying to get me to "blow." I haven't blown, but you just keep trying. You have gone so far as to claim that another poster who supported me was me posting under another name. I believe that that is a claim that Dory36 could check up on. I know for a fact that it's a lie, so I would like to have him do so and report to the board community who is telling it straight.

Who elected you Town Sheriff, TH? I'd like a chance to vote for someone else.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Re: Profanity, personal attacks, and disgusting ba

The ***** spin-o-meter is flying today.

Dear Ed had already gone over the edge...I just gave him a few insults on his way down the hill. Unfortunately (or fortunately) most of his posts were deleted by Dory, but anyone with a 48 hour memory will remember that he was already on fire before I even said a word to him.

As far as trying to establish a 'pattern' to create division, according to these threads:

http://early-retirement.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=misc;action=display;num=1077731188;start=0

http://early-retirement.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=misc;action=display;num=1078107335;start=0

If you want the readers digest version, perhaps this quote will suffice:
"So if you don't like my negative comments about people who want to drop out of the workforce, maximize their social security benefits and reduce their taxes, and then claim that they are doing the rest of the country some sort of favor, screw you."

Any interested party can see for themselves that Ted self-immolated and was told to take a hike by about two dozen members. I hardly ever talked to or about the guy. In response to the assertion that I was the guy who made Ted leave, I asked the community for their perspective. Not one other person agreed with it, and in fact everybody thought it was someone different that had inspired Teds implosion.

However, if I was 110% the sole and only reason why Ted decided to leave, and he's said so himself, I'll accept that. I think anyone who reads the above two threads will find very little room to lay blame.

As far as my disagreements with SG...well if the best you can do is come up with one guy that I've had it out with over a year and a half period in the entire ER community, I guess that sounds pretty good to me. Honestly I like SG, enjoy a majority of his posts, and wish we had never gotten off on some of those tangents that upset him so much. I am 100% guilty of having a different opinion and arguing it to the point of what Nords likes to call a "mutually reciprocated diatribe". Gosh, that never happens on the internet. :

In your case...hmm, it looks like 30-40 people are following you around trying to make you "blow". In fact, several other boards have created special areas to mock you. What does that say...?

As far as your other 'identities', I noted to several other members the various personas I thought were you. Since I called you out for doing it, those personas have not posted here or anywhere else. I'll also point out that the guest posts of "***** is great and I want to hear more of his stuff" have also ceased.

So you know you're being watched and you cut it out. Good move.

As for checking it out, if the stamp Dory keeps on each post includes the full IP header, I can quite certainly say from the clock drift in the senders local time field of the time stamp if two posts came from the same physical computer. Would you like that to happen or did you think that using an anonymizer service or a proxy server to mask your IP address was going to work out for you?

As far as town sheriff, I dont need no steenkin badges...