[InsaneBaron]

MOST of the comments. Not all, unfortunately.

If only we could meet your standards.

I don't want to start the argument all over again, so I'm going to resist the temptation to respond in kind here. If you don't want to restart the drama, sarcasm isn't going to help.

So I ask you to drop the condescending and professorial tone. It's a bit maddening for me to see you pointing fingers at the reaction of some people after what you wrote in that tone of yours. A bit of discretion, I agree, is advised. I refrained from making the same comment that Battuta eventually wrote because I did not want to "create more drama", but I'm beggining to think that was ill-advised. I am also learning here how to properly engage the community and particularly today and yesterday were bizarre and hard.

For the record, I withdrew what I had said that offended people. Not a lot of posters do that.

[Grizzly]

You did not withdraw everything offensive, I am afraid. I would not have responded to your latter statements if you had.

[InsaneBaron]

Okay, this thread is turning into a rerun of the last one, which is not at all a good thing. I agree with Luis that bring this up for discussion so soon after the event might not have been a good call.

I've admitted that what I said was untrue and disrespectful. As I've said multiple times, if I had been in a condition to think before posting I would not have posted for exactly those reasons. I don't see anything to be gained by continuing the haggling. You've made your points.

I'm ready to move on. And I intend to make sure nothing of this sort happens again in my case. By the end of today I'll stop responding to further comments on the event unless they really need response.

[MP-Ryan]

Luis, InsaneBaron, and Joshua - stop.  The point of this is not to re-hash specific issues discussed in the other thread, the point is to discuss the way in which the moderation of the other thread was handled, e.g.:

1.  Well, but can use refinement. <- My view
2.  Ambivalent.
3.  Atrocious.

Anyone who wants to be snippity can go do it via PM.

[InsaneBaron]

Luis, InsaneBaron, and Joshua - stop.  The point of this is not to re-hash specific issues discussed in the other thread, the point is to discuss the way in which the moderation of the other thread was handled, e.g.:

1.  Well, but can use refinement. <- My view
2.  Ambivalent.
3.  Atrocious.

Anyone who wants to be snippity can go do it via PM.

Thank you. I would agree with you and Goober that the moderating was pretty good but could use some refinement.

[Flipside]

Well, you will never ever make GD an area free of those kind of reactions unless you ban religious and political threads, because years of experience in this place has taught most users that these are hot subjects that almost always lead to an argument or attack of some kind.

I'm not saying that is what should be done, but it doesn't really matter how it's moderated, there will always be someone who claims bias because they feel they were treated unfairly, it's one of the reasons I quit as a GM, because it was getting to utterly stupid levels.

So there's little point in complaining about a thread getting inflamed when everyone knew that would happen from the moment they read the title of it.

[NGTM-1R]

that was not a direct personal attack

I cannot possibly agree with this sentiment. I was told that I am a habitual murderer, that the only reason my wife and I are contemplating a child now is to kill it.

That statement was not retracted, except, in the words of the meme, in the sense of "le uneducated opinion" "you're a moron" "No, see! I TROL/SOCIAL EXPERIMENT U". I did not receive an apology; nobody said they were sorry. Telling me that I am a better person than you thought I was is an admission of error, yes, but it is not an admission of wrongdoing; the efforts that were gone to in the same post to deflect the suggestion anything wrong or, frankly,  sinful had been done were injury to insult.

To make matters worse, InsaneBaron's faux-apology only excused those who were active in the thread there. It offered no apology for claiming that all atheists were this way, and it did not retract its position that anyone who was not personally involved in the thread was still exactly what the original posting claimed. It remained an attack on any member of this board who it claimed to describe and who was not active in the thread.

The first  post example is about as clear an example of "fighting words" as I have ever seen; the only thing that prevented me personally from reacting violently is that I can't punch people through the Internet. The second does not address more than a fraction of the offense that was given in the first posting even in the most charitable of readings.

[InsaneBaron]

Finish reading the thread, and you'll get the admission of wrongdoing you want.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Finish reading the thread, and you'll get the admission of wrongdoing you want.

I've read it; I didn't get it either. Wouldn't it have been more sense to just use the post you just made to apologize, rather than saying, "I apologized elsewhere! Go look it up yourself!"?

[swashmebuckle]

IMO, the fact that the thread didn't turn into a seething ball of naked rage probably had more to do with the character of the group of people that was disparaged (or at least the subset that elected to respond) than it did with the moderation style.

At any rate, people still feel personally attacked when someone says something nasty about a group they are a part of. It's probably worse than being singled out with an actual personal attack in most cases, both in terms of general disruptiveness to the conversation and for what it reveals about the attacker/overall group dynamics.

Personal spats/vendettas might make a couple people quit here and there, but stuff like this could make people abandon ship in droves if it isn't thoroughly stomped out.

[InsaneBaron]

Finish reading the thread, and you'll get the admission of wrongdoing you want.

I've read it; I didn't get it either. Wouldn't it have been more sense to just use the post you just made to apologize, rather than saying, "I apologized elsewhere! Go look it up yourself!"?

Well, if that's what you want, I hereby admit, not for the first time, that what I did was unacceptable. Satisfied?
I sent him back to the old thread to make it clear that he had made a mistake.

[Flipside]

So one thread full of angry people has now become three...

I'm not really sure this is helping.

[InsaneBaron]

So one thread full of angry people has now become three...

I'm not really sure this is helping.

For what it's worth, I don't think its helping either.

[NGTM-1R]

Finish reading the thread, and you'll get the admission of wrongdoing you want.

If I had seen another post I thought bore even slight relevance, I would have mentioned it. I did not.

I read the entire thread before making my first post in this topic. (Several times in fact, because I was rankly incredulous.) I even called Goober out over PM for his insensitivity before I posted here. Assuming I am rageposting and chiding me in this manner is compounding your offenses, not mitigating them.

Doubly so because you did not link to any specific post, you simply mockingly chose to tell me to reread the entire thread. Your behavior is not that of a man who is sorry for his actions. It is infused with a supercilious, toxic superiority.

[InsaneBaron]

Finish reading the thread, and you'll get the admission of wrongdoing you want.

If I had seen another post I thought bore even slight relevance, I would have mentioned it. I did not.

I read the entire thread before making my first post in this topic. I even called Goober out over PM for his insensitivity before I posted here. Assuming I am rageposting and chiding me in this manner is compounding your offenses, not mitigating them.

Doubly so because you did not link to any specific post, you simply mockingly chose to tell me to reread the entire thread. Your behavior is not that of man who is sorry for his actions.

I'm done arguing with you. You got what you wanted multiple times, here and in the other thread. No mockery involved. I never even accused you of rageposting, I simply asked that you correct your mistake.

From this point on, as I stated earlier, I will not be responding to further comments about the matter unless someone brings up something that's both new and of value. I'm not going to beat the dead horse any longer.

[Scotty]

I never even accused you of rageposting, I simply asked that you correct your mistake.

So, I'm just going to take the time to mention to everybody, as a member of HLP and without my moderator hat for a moment, that I find this almost hilariously ironic.

[Hades]

huehuehuehuehueh

gibe empathi plos

[MP-Ryan]

I get that a lot of you are rightly pissed at InsaneBaron for the original post and lack of a meaningful apology, and I admit that I was also pretty pissed off concerning the implication that my wife and I don't have a loving marriage and are ready to off our two kids at a moment's notice just because.

But.

But, what happened was NOT a personal attack.  People can choose to take it as a personal attack, and take offense, but that is their response and not the original content (it did devolve further after what became the OP, but that's a secondary issue).

Now, as in real life, it is my personal opinion that I would rather participate in a forum where people are allowed to make stupid generalizes statements and get thoroughly debated on the subject, than one in which moderation deals with subjective offense taken instead of objective offense given TO A INDIVIDUAL.

I'm not saying it was improper to take offense to the post; rather, I'm saying that the best way to handle posts of that nature is to thoroughly deconstruct them and express how unacceptable it is, rather than a simple lock.  What makes more of an impression on someone expressing flawed reasoning - one moderator shutting it down, or a community explaining exactly why that line of thought is neither valid nor reasonable?

There are obviously some interesting dynamics at play - the drama comment among them, given the vigor of the discussion in the opposite direction in the guidelines thread - but I honestly do believe that this example is a positive change in the way off topic moderation has been handled on HLP.

[karajorma]

I don't think that deconstructing an argument necessarily precludes the possibility of punishment though.

Had InsaneBaron stood by his original comment, the outcome would, and I believe should have been very different.

[NGTM-1R]

But, what happened was NOT a personal attack.

InsaneBaron quite literally stated it was intended as a personal attack on his opponents when he said they were better than he thought in the second post; he admitted that it was not a stupid generalization, but a specific descriptor of his opponents, by saying that his descriptors had changed in regard to those specific people.

This is why I stated that on reflection, I think the first post was handled properly. Your view of events is valid, assuming only the first post. But we don't actually have just the first post. This is why when the second clarified the first was actually meant as a personal attack on InsaneBaron's opponents, I was and remain convinced that action should have been taken. Just because the attack is withdrawn does not mean it did not happen.

I would have to compare threads to be assured that there was also no participant in the first thread where it originally went up, but not the second where the post was split to, and hence not absolved of their status. My instinct on quick review is no, but it's possible.