(adult forum link...)

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showpost.ph...9&postcount=77

I'm incredibly curious as to how this constitutes a personal attack, and I'd love some guidance, if for nothing else, the rules clarification. IMO, this doesn't resemble a personal attack....

Well, she did call another poster mentally sick (although in this case, after reading the thread, I have to admit that I see her point).

It's one of those bordernline, implied personal attacks.

The person may have deserved it, but that doesn't make it within forum rules. As X said, we have the report this post to the moderator button to take care of posts like that.

I don't know, Kittydreamer,........ seems like a reasonable thing to say.

But maybe I'm biased.

Except if the admin is already in the thread (as X had been) and had seen the offending posts (as X had), then no reporting should be necessary.

It's an even bigger problem in the political forum. And that doesn't even count the fact that nobody has yet explained to me how that constitutes a personal attack.

It's a borderline, implied attack.

Saying he has a "sick mentality" is just a more polite way of calling him a "sick fuck" or whatever. Personal attacks don't have to involve clear name calling from what I've seen in my years here.

I'm not sure how you know this -- unless I'm completely overlooking something, X hadn't participated in the thread up to the point where WhoGirl posted.

Also, sometimes moderators discuss certain issues privately, and it's not always a case of "if a moderator hasn't done anything yet, they're never going to..."

'Report a post...' helps the moderators do their jobs, but moderation is for moderators. That's how they came up with the name, after all. If you see something offensive, you don't have to report it, but you shouldn't reply with something teetering on a personal attack either. I don't think WhoGirl's at all unjustified in thinking what she thought, but leave the cleaning up to the mods. That's what they're there for.

I suppport WG on this one. I always try to be civil here, and I could have said something of that tenor. Saying that this poster has a "sick mentality" is a straightforward expression of opinion. It's like calling a certain other member of the adult forum monomaniacal because everything he says comes back around to the same issue.

In general, from what I've seen, the mods allow no saying of anything about another member.

You can attack their opinion. She could have said that's a sick viewpoint or whatever. But you can't say the person has a sick mentality as that gets more at talking negatively about that member, which is a no-no here, regarldess of whether direct and flagrant, or more indirect like this case.

I don't know why some people have a hard time just leaving a situation to the people who were actually involved in it. And why you would post this thread in addition to sending an email complaining about my moderating. But since a general lesson about personal attacks can be learned here...

Saying a member has a sick mentality and is stupid, no matter how it's phrased in trying to skirt the direct statement of "you are sick and stupid", is not allowed here. Due to the circumstances and the relatively low severity of the attack I warned in this case rather than suspending.

The member's particular comments that the attack was directed toward, and subsequently being reported after I posted that that was the proper way to handle it, were being discussed among the moderators before being removed. Your emailed report said those posts hadn't been removed. That is incorrect.

I've resorted to just lurking, but after seeing this, I just had to chime in.

My biggest complaint, and the primary reason I stopped posting here, is that in cases where I've been reamed, it's been in retaliation of someone else's attack. Problem is while the original attacker gets nothing done to them or said about them in the thread, the mod makes it a point to call the 2nd person out for responding.

There's no reason WG should have had that even said to her publicly in the thread. The mods bitch about reporting things privately and not handling them publicly in the thread, yet they call out the person that replies publicly.

Sorry, but that's a completely assinine and backwards process of moderation.

Maybe some people have a hard time leaving this to the people directly invovled because they don't agree with what's taken place. Or maybe they're more empassioned when it comes to issues like rape and sodomy, and find it deplorable that someone else would joke about it, saying they found it funny, and that they "deserved what they got for being stupid."

Immediately after I made my post, I made my report. When I posted what I did, specifically the "I'm sure we'll be saying the same thing." comment, I figured that surely someone like this is going to be at least suspended, if not banned. He was describing a sexual assault in pornographic terms, asking repeatedly if she spit or swallowed, said he wouldn't have believed she were raped even if she was raped, only referred to the victim as a "bitch" and a "young hot teen bitch" and said the only thing that would have been funnier than the sodomy would have been if she were flat-out raped.

Somewhere in my mind I thought "This can't be the kind of person that DVDTalk would allow to stay for very long." Also, considering that MisterQ's reason for joining DVDTalk was to start a thread bitching about horrordvds.com not approving him, his second thread was about Child Porn, and that he hasn't posted much else other than that here, I figured that would be taken into consideration when taking action with the "she deserved it for being stupid" and "The only thing that would have been funnier is if the "cop" had the Fiance pop her cherry...what a way that would've been to lose your virginity, LOL! " comments.

I guess not though. I guess he has to do something **really** bad before you'll do anything about it, huh?

I personally don't think that you should be pointing out that someone complained about your moderating through email. That was obviously meant to be a private form of communication between the emailer and Geoff. And it shouldn't be rubbed in their face as being something negative just because you don't like it. As you've said yourself, if you find something wrong with someone's posts, you should report it. Right?

Gotta agree with Sleepy on this one: the mods say "Hey, handle it privately", but then they reprimand publically WG BEFORE reprimanding this guy, who was OK'ing rape and such. She was, if anything, bouncing one of this guy's insults back on him, saying others MIGHT say the same about him... that was not the same as saying he was stupid.

Hi there. I'm not sure I've ever run into you.

I really felt strongly about that thread and really wanted to be able to voice my disgust for it but since X locked it, I was unable to do that so I brought it here.

Yeah we know your definition.

Just out of curiosity, how many people got reprimanded for attacking art in the many threads he started? His comments were, in comparison to the ones currently being discussed, relatively harmless. Silly? Yes. Completely at odds with all reality? Yes. But harmful? Not really. Yet people went after him time after time, calling him every possible name under the sun.

Then someone starts posting about how it would have been funny if a girl gets raped, and that she deserved it, and the person who calls him out on it is the one who gets publicly reprimanded? Hell, the guy even thanked X for reprimanding WhoGirl. Even though he later got reprimanded, he now knows that he can say what he wants and the mods will defend him to a degree.

So if we're allowed to go all out on art, why can't WhoGirl criticize somebody for advocating rape?

Aww maaaannnn Supr, you probably went and spoiled the next Art thread.

Hey, I'm going on the mods definition that I learned the hard way years ago.

Probably not. I'm sure the mods try to stay away from those threads unless somebody actually reports something, and no one takes him seriously enough to do that.

Not so fast. In most cases, the 2nd person responding is the first person to actually post something that is a personal attack (as it was in this case).

The "original attacker" usually writes something that is generally offensive--perhaps over and over again--but not pointed at any member. Then someone would take offense to that and take that personally, then reply with a personal attack on the original poster. The moderators will always take action against the second person for the personal attack, and this happens very quickly. The moderators may take action against the original poster depending on the content, member's history, circumstance, etc., and this usually requires a discussion among the moderators so this action may take some time.

In the case at hand, WhoGirl's personal attack was reprimanded immediately while MisterQ's posts were being discussed by the moderators. It may have been frustrating to some of you that WG got the warning while "nothing" was being done to MQ. The moderators spent a couple days in a virtual discussion and concluded that MQ's posts were beyond what was deemed acceptable here. It didn't help that some of you were impatient and had to keep sending unnecessary e-mails and reports which only slowed down the process.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

Oh, and to answer the question of the thread title ...

"He has the same type of sick mentality ..." is a personal attack. Calling someone sick in the head, how is that NOT a personal attack?

Generally, when you write ABOUT another member in a derogatory (a.k.a. not flattering) way, that is a personal attack. Before you click on "Submit Reply" ask yourself whether your post is discussing the thread topic or it is discussing the other poster. If it's the former, then you're most likely safe. If it's the latter and it's not something that's flattering, then you might want to reconsider.

namja
Moderator, DVD Talk Forums

That seems an inappropriate and unfair thing for a mod to say, given how we're "trained". We're trained -- repeatedly told -- to report bad posts, to email a mod, when we encounter problems with a poster, and now we're being chastised for it? Is that really the message you want to send?

It's my understanding that he meant those of you who repeatedly sent emails on the same posts over and over; kind of like a child repeatedly asking "are we there yet?". I'm not calling anyone a child but a level of patience would help when considering that the moderators rightfully discuss things that aren't personal attacks (sending message after message that post #XXX is offensive until you get a response certainly slows things down though) before taking action.

So why not give a short reply that says that the posts are being discussed by the moderators? It's something I've seen done before and it would go a long way towards alleviating alot of this. Quite frankly, unless we see that one way or another, how are we supposed to know whether to send messages to the moderators, lest we be accused of slowing things down for sending messages over items that were already reported and are being discussed?

It's their call to make. By posting a "short reply that says that the posts are being discussed by the moderators", it alters the discussion at hand, perhaps unfairly since people act differently when they "know" they're being closely scrutinized. There's a balance the moderators seek out between the absolute free speech some people "think" they have on a private forum such as this and the amount of genuinely interesting discussion that takes place when people aren't fearful of getting slammed by over moderation that takes place when a small (typically) group of people are offended by a particular posting. In large part, I think they've done an excellent job over the years (and I've been chastised a time or two myself so I speak from experience).

One of the best ways to avoid trouble is to refrain from participating in threads where you "know" there's no common ground between yourself and the others in the thread. If someone advocates rape, child abuse, or any number of other disgusting acts; I'm pretty sure that I have no interest in reading or responding to their rants. Why some people feel obligated to jump in and debate such people, to the point of making personal attacks that are far more readily violations of the policies of DVD Talk than the original offensive speech is beyond me.

Again, sending 3, 5, or 10 messages that you're pissed off a person is posting offensive messages (especially concerning a single posting) that aren't clear violations of the rules strikes me as problematic but your point is well taken. Catering to those who demand an immediate response or they'll keep hitting that notify the moderator button doesn't seem to make sense though.