So it is okay to call her a jerk, a miser, imply she is an idiot, call her a giant pain in the ass, and a cheap bastard, but the word fatty is a personal attack?
The only difference I see, it one refers to a physical attribute, whereas the others are not.

well, the others were related to her behavior in the original post, the fatt comment was independent of that. it was a fine line, but I think there was a difference.

Moderating is not an exact science. The mods don't pour over every post in every thread. The Report this post to the moderator feature is probably the best tool to know how the community feels about a particular post. When a post triggers a lot of those, it's usually a good sign that the comment was over the line. You also have to consider the poster as well. If it's Groucho calling Bandoman something, it is probably meant and taken a different way than 2 people who don't know each other.

I think the message we can all take away from this is: launch all the personal attacks you deem necessary at Bandoman.

Indeed. I'm drafting an essay: Why I No Longer Agree With Bandoman. Or How I Didn't Leave the Bandoman, the Bandoman Left Me.

Here's a personal attack which isn't allowed:

<i>Hey Stupid, you'd have to be retarded to not know the difference between answering a question and just calling someone fat. Are you that dumb or did you just eat too many paint chips when you were a kid?</i>

Here's the same but not a personal attack:

<i>Hi, calling someone "fatty" and simply replying to their question and then referring back to older posts that are extremely contradictory of the current post are very different. I believe most people see that VinVega is being very fair and reasonable here, and I find it surprising that someone is actually thinking otherwise. Oh well, have a nice Sunday and thanks for asking.</i>

Meh, I think the mods probably let some of the more senior members get away with a bit more in that thread than they should have... and I suppose it's a little unfair that you got called out just because you only have five hundred or so posts.

Still, that's the way that the world seems to work.

I had the same thought about the attack post as VinVega. I was dealing with it when I saw that he had already handled it.

There's a difference between being somewhat harsh in a response when someone asks for an opinion as to their behavior and someone not discussing the issue at all and just throwing out an attack at the person.

And no, it doesn't have anything to do with how long you've been here. I wonder why people who think our moderating is so biased stick around and post here.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened here. Very perceptive.

das

Thanks for the explanations. I was just trying to think precisely what the difference is between:

You're a "jerk."
You're a "pain in the ass."
You're a "fatty."

I know it's about context, but I was wondering if someone had a better way of explaning it than what I was able to come up with.
If you are referring to the fatty post, I didn't make it.

It's more difficult to understand when you misrepresent the comments from the thread like that.

das

Folks, I don't disagree with the moderators. What I want to know is how to explain this to a kid. Like when a kid keeps asking "Why? But why?"

Give him a spanking?

Try this:
das

Of course, now you have to explain why he's getting a spanking and what a "das Monkey" is.

True -- my apologies. That was jadow, who has something like 120 posts. Which proves the point even more succinctly.

Honestly, real life works this way, too. You can crack on your friends and put them down, and it's okay because you have a history. But if someone new comes into the group and starts making wisecracks, he'll get put in his place pretty quickly.

But what VinVega said is also true. Sometimes a mod will catch something really blatant and miss the half-dozen innuendos in a thread. Sometimes they'll let something minor slide just to keep a thread going. It's a tough job -- most forums tend to go way too far in either direction, to the point that everyone is walking on eggshells, or everyone is flaming left and right. The mods at DVDTalk do an excellent job of striking that balance.

*hugs Mojo in an apolitical fashion*

Sometimes it IS about history

Gatordeb has a weight problem - she's even mentioned it.

so calling her fatty is more of an issue than calling her a jerk or a pain in the ass.... it's a real 'personal attack' --- in this case the words 'fatty' are more powerful than other words.

And the moderators ('it's not an exact science') are in tune to that.



For example, if I post again right after this post, it'll trigger something.... and if you don't know why, that's YOUR issue - but the mods know what I mean! (Especially X)

Right, X? ( )

Irrespective of how many posts people have, I suspect that anyone would have received a warning for that post. Other posts may have been harsher than necessary, but this one struck a lot of people as over the line.

Edited to make sense and to better reflect reality.

It's a question of 'relevance' as well. The various opinions of her behavior in this particular event are relevant. His description of her physical build is not relevant. I can see why he might have brought it up, what with the four burritos and all, but she explained that she only eats one per meal, debunking his initial assumption and assertion. Regardless, the use of the term "fatty" was simply neither explicitly pertinent to the thread nor polite.

Agreed. The issue was the validity of the coupon and the rightness of the shop's decision.

If that's not sig material, I'm not sure what is.

It doesn't seem like this is the first time Gatordeb has posted and people launch on her. She seems to bring out the worst in some people here, and I think maybe in the past it has been allowed to continue so maybe now people think it is ok to do.

I think he's just bitter about his Politics forum suspension. Of course irony of irony, he probably avoided a full on suspension since he's a "senior member"