Well, this is a challenge to you, Dweller, and to all those other people who say "What are you getting upset for? we're in the Flame Wars!"

Do the Flame Wars give you complete freedom to insult whoever you want to?

TLOY thought that I compared him to a "nice guy" and he was upset. Why would this happening in the Flame Wars section (as Limertilly helpfully pointed out to him) make it any less hurtful?

Clover said to me: no offense, but Austrians and Germans don't have a sense of humour - and I quipped that it's kind of hard not to be offended at a sentence like that.
And Dweller said: "This is the Flame Wars."
So what?
A statement hurts or doesn't hurt, no matter where it's posted in.

I agree that people who post here should not be offended at other people's opinions. Like, if I were anti-feminist, pro-Bush or pro-capital punishment or whatever.
And anyone who posts here shouldn't be offended at strong vocabulary and sexual explicitness.

But that does not mean we can simply stop respecting other people's feelings.
Or at least we should afterwards, post-insult, accept it as valid if people say they feel hurt.

I raise this issue now because Dweller posted the following in Del's thread:

quote:

I also take issue with the apparently common assumption that venting is a good thing, but that's a discussion for another time.

If you think this, Dweller, why do you as a mod support indiscriminate hurtfulness in the Flame Wars?
If you offer a place for Flames, there's going to be Flames.
Unfair flames, too.
What you call venting.

I am not only posting this to Dweller, though. I've seen this happen plenty of times. Someone feels insulted - "shut up, this is the Flame wars".

This is an issue that confuses me. I'm not attacking anyone personally here, but I want to know what exactly the Flame Wars are for and where we draw the line.

And I would really appreciate it if no one took advantage of the place I posted it in to say something like:
"No offense, but you've only been here a few months you little bitch, how dare you tell us what to do."

Regards,
onions

Being against an idea and foisting my opinion of that idea on everyone are two completely different things. I also disagree with drinking until drunk, premarital sex, drug use, excessive swearing, and the worship of idols, false gods and nature. I think we can agree that if I excised every post on those subjects, we'd pretty much have the weather left to talk about.

That doesn't mean I'm going to do anything prevent people from talking about those things. In point of fact, I've encouraged discussion of these things because this message board is not my personal playground. My sig, AJGraeme stands for "Assistant Janitor," in part, and that's how I see my job. A janitor doesn't make his facility suit his purposes, he helps a facility meets its purposes as safely and cleanly as possible.

To get to the del's thread, that didn't start in Flame Wars, it was moved there, at the discretion of a mod, because of the whole shitting in open wounds thing. Neither worksafe nor kidsafe, two of the guidelines we use in moving something to Flame Wars, particularly when it's in an initial post. Del chose to place that vent in the main non-Neil forum and not in Flame Wars.

In case you're wondering, this is also the place where you can post links to particularly salacious sites, though pornography is greatly discouraged, particularly the hardcore stuff. And, yes, it's a place to rant in nasty ways.

I believe that there is a legitimate need for a forum for people to vent in because not everyone is like me and not everyone holds my opinion. To remove Flame Wars wouldn't just be saying, "I don't think venting is healthy," it'd be saying, "I don't think venting is healthy, and you don't either, trust me." I'm not going to do that.

Okay.
Thank you for clearing up the your personal opinion/your job as a mod issue.

And contrary to you I do think that venting is necessary.
So I think the Flame Wars in general is a good idea.

But I don't understand this "Don't get offended, it's the Flame Wars" business.

Is there a line for offensiveness and where does it start?

Isn't there one?

Good grief.

(And for the record, no, I wasn't wondering about salaciousness...if I get offended at sexual content I shouldn't be looking at it in the first place, should I?)

onions

For me, flame wars is a place to put threads not safe for our many posters who check the boards at work (though the casual swearing everywhere doesn't help them much). Before we had a Flame Wars forum, we'd get discussion threads which would turn heated and people would lose track of an argument against an opinion and against themselves. Many immovable object type of opinions as well. One or two of these threads in WE made the tone of the board come down and made it not a fun place to be, so we made a place to move those threads. It wasn't initially made as a place to casually insult people. I tend to move things here if it's a venting thread (like the teens) or extremely sexual or if it's generally nasty (for example, I think we had a thread for dead baby jokes started down here once, or the 'meat or open wound' picture quiz). Although we don't usually write people up for being insulting down here, because that's the way the forum has grown, if someone says something inappropriately insulting, people will still comment on it (i.e. many people thought Clinton's comment in Del's teen thread was inappropriate even if we allow posts like that here).
I can't think of an example right now, but I know I've been wary to post a flame wars type of thread before because I didn't want casual insulting behavior as responses. A bit frustrating that.

I remember posting a similar thread here one or two years ago. Since I can't find it any more, I guess it's been deleted for reasons of space... Anyway, I've seen FW threads go both ways - sometimes they were very useful, because they did allow people to vent, sometimes what was supposed to be venting escalated into sheer hurtfulness and even hatred. (No, frankly I don't think I'm exaggerating.)

In a way I've come to regard FW as a sort of barometer of the boards' subconscious. If the atmosphere is bad, it's more likely that things get ugly here. If the atmosphere is good, sometimes we have the best, most interesting discussions here. Right now I do get the feeling that the WEers in general are more horny and/or sexually frustrated, so there are more threads of a sexual nature.

I think that venting can be a good thing, but at the same time I do think that quite a few of us, me included, could do with a bit more 'self-censorship' every now and then. Just because we can say something, just because there's a place for us where we can say it, doesn't mean that everything should be said.

i don't think Flame Wars is an act like an animal space, or even an act like a jerk, or act like an arsehole or whatever, but what i do realize is that if anyone does like as an animal, jerk or arsehole, the mods won't be acting against it in an official tone because, well, this is Flame Wars.

nothing has ever prevented people to use their own brains, and realize when they are acting as asshats, aside from their own strong will to ignore this simple fact and their lack of maturity.

i suppose there will always be a poster that at a certain point will cause this issue to be debated again (it already has, it will be again), but is it evil of me to hope ClintonHammond will soon step the line in World's End and get banned? wait, it's not evil of me to think it here, cause this is Flame Wars

Originally the subheading below Flame Wars read: Do it here and leave the rest of the board in peace. (Or something to that effect).

Flame Wars was originally designed to be the place where people could go to slug it out if they had a serious disagreement, and not drag the rest of the board down into it. If you've ever heard the phrase "Let's take this outside", Flame Wars was the board's equivilant of outside.

Now, because this board is filled with a lot of cool and mature people, because we've spent years getting to know each other, because we've met, been to signings, conventions, gotten involved in relationships, gotten married, had kids, etc and shared it with each other, it's seldom used for that purpose. (Hell, I'm not exactly the most social member of this board, but I've probably met about three quarters or more of the active posters in North America, and several internation posters). But this still is the place where anything goes.

Inevitably, that right gets abused, and people act like assholes. There have been plenty of examples, both past and present, including myself, for that matter.

Still though, there needs to be a place where it can be said and done, not just for the help of venting, but also just because there should be a forum where you can say to someone who is being jerk "You're being a fucking asshole", for when it goes beyond a point where you can debate intellectually, or gently point out that the person is acting in an unwise or unfriendly way.

As a question to you, can you see the value of having this as an open forum if, say, Clinton had said those things somewhere else on the Board and, rather than turning it into a war in the World's End, or Other Writers, or wherever it happened, someone could safely light into him here? And if you are a fan of venting, do you not also see the value of being able to open up a thread with a title like "Clinton is an asshole" here without it being something that the mods would come down on?

The thing is, that if there is place where these things happen, you have the choice to avoid it, onions.

you could quite happily stay here at the board and never read, or contribute, to a flame wars thread. And some do. some of our most prolific posters never post here.

but ugliness is inevitable... from time to time. So it goes. at least here it can be contained.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
I think we can agree that if I excised every post on those subjects, we'd pretty much have the weather left to talk about.

I'm sure, if we all work together, we can find some way to make the weather offensive. Come on, people!

the current weather is the result of a left wing, radical feminist lesbian conspiracy of fucking on plane wings.

Alright Bear, I've talked to you about listening to Rush before bed.

*unplugs Bear's radio, blocks the computer*

yeah, Geddy Lee's voice is getting to his poor bear's brain.

What do they have to do with the feminazis?

[edit: damn, the Count beat me to it and did it much better!]

I knew that was coming somehow.....

The weather, people. the fucking weather.

anyone who can predict the weather is intriscally a fascist. Fascia - strength through unity!

*makes Roman salute*

Political commentary isn't usually flameworthy unless you're directly assaulting customer. Like this:

Mischief, you like rainshowers? Well, that explains why you're a pedophile.

Put some back into it, man.

i think if i started a thread espousing fascism through weather control in the main section it might end up here PDQ.

In, fact, my old mate the imp of the peverse is almost making me want to do just that.

though actually, i suspect people would only see it as a joke. even if it wasn't funny.

in't life wierd?

you irreducible fuckwit.

Ronin:

quote:

As a question to you,

Who, me? Or Alinda?

quote:

The thing is, that if there is place where these things happen, you have the choice to avoid it, onions.

Well that's not a useful response, is it, Mischief? If I just left every time something bothered me, I wouldn't be married. Or have a job. Or anything else for that matter.

I suppose I don't mind that ugliness happens. You're right, it does. But there is a kind of casual rudeness that I think shouldn't be happening.
That said, I wouldn't be posting here if I didn't see the value of this place and enjoy being here.

quote:

Originally posted by onions:
Well that's not a useful response, is it, Mischief? If I just left every time something bothered me, I wouldn't be married. Or have a job. Or anything else for that matter.

Bollocks. For starters, this is a public, Googleable forum, not a longterm relationship with one person or a contract to perform a task in exchange for pay. The comparison's flawed at its outset because the stakes here are much, much lower than in the other two.

You turn away from things in both your marriage and your job all the time. We all have things in our lives that we don't like that we just live with, and you can do the same here as well.

quote:

Originally posted by onions:
Ronin:

quote:

As a question to you,

Who, me? Or Alinda?

you
(i know i'm not ronin but i already know the answer)

quote:

Originally posted by onions:
I suppose I don't mind that ugliness happens. You're right, it does. But there is a kind of casual rudeness that I think shouldn't be happening.
That said, I wouldn't be posting here if I didn't see the value of this place and enjoy being here.

well, a lot of thinks shouldn't be happening, but you see, we aren't a one person one mind community. we are different people, with different minds, different opinions and there are days in which we go through stuff that make us act in different manners. but shit happens, and when you are on a public forum i guess you just have to live with it.