Trolling rule

[Tiberius]

Also if you think the forum is trending towards an environment where everyone agrees with everyone, I really think you ought to participate in more threads...

[account_inactive]

Toffee? Because that's the best popcorn.

[Edwardo Piet]

We don't want folks like Edward John throwing their shit all over the forums just because of some mental masturbatory question like "Who's to say spamming giant bolded colored text all over AF and ignoring everyone's points is really "disruptive"?" bullshit.

[Minimalist]

Ah, I know porn when I see it...

Cultural idiocy abounds...  

Not calling you an idiot, Min.

It was good enough for Justice Stewart - it's good enough for me.

[Edwardo Piet]

Also if you think the forum is trending towards an environment where everyone agrees with everyone, I really think you ought to participate in more threads...

But EP disagrees.

Oh, I see what you mean!

[Excited Penguin]

I just disagree that we should ban anyone based on how they make other people feel. Spamming wholly unrelated things and advertising... Sure, that should be banned. But banning someone because your itty-bitty feelings are offended or because they trigger your intellectual complacency.. That is policing speech and it might very well be a remnant of the currently rampaging PC movement. It's the stupidest thing I can think of and it creates an environment where everyone agrees with everyone with the exception of a few chose cases which are kept around for entertainment purposes... Such as Rik. 

I'm not staff, though, and staff will never agree with me on principle, me thinks. But I thought I should begin a discussion about it nonetheless. If it fails, I will probably begin one unrelated to the forum rules and more about this phenomenon in general...

I don't agree that we are policing speech. Again, this isn't about some one off thing or even a few posts. This rule is designed to detect people who do this repeatedly. There are also ways in which you can express an opinion which people disagree with, but doing it in a non-provocative way.

Well, okay, I guess. I don't see this discussion really going anywhere , despite my hopes when creating this thread that it would. . . 

I disagree wholeheartedly, because as I said, I don't think anyone should be silenced, not for their opinions and not for how they express them. Not for appearing to not really hold them and not even for lying about them with an ulterior motive in mind. 

But I might be wrong because I might not know the reasoning that goes on behind the scenes or the cases that gave rise to this rule. I really don't know. I just can't imagine someone can be so "disruptive" with their posts that they have to be banned. Color me skeptical, I guess .

[Tiberius]

How do you define irrelevancy or unrelatedness to subject?

Bananas.

I don't think I got enough kudos for this post, so I'm posting it again.

C'mon guys this was gold.

[Excited Penguin]

Bananas.

I don't think I got enough kudos for this post, so I'm posting it again.

C'mon guys this was gold.

You must've been inspired from that meme of vorlons.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I used to run a discussion forum for three years so I know from personal experience that no matter what the mods do, someone will complain. If they let someone like Edward John continue to post in the interest of free speech then people will complain. If they ban him then someone will complain about there not being any free speech.

Thing is, there is no universal right to free speech. Nowhere in the world allows unfettered free speech, especially not a privately owned discussion forum. The mods need to find the right balance for their particular discussion forum and this is what they have done here. Every discussion forum has different needs. Theist discussion forums need an echo chamber because they are more interested in maintaining their faith. An atheist discussion forum needs dissent to encourage debate. But if the theists isn't debating, ignoring all responses and just spamming like Edward John was, then that doesn't help encourage debate.

Trolling is quite easy to define. I can't actually remember the specific well honed definition that I used but it worked quite well. But basically it consisted of deliberate intention to provoke anger or cause offence, ignoring responses and repeating yourself without trying to further the conversation.

[Whateverist]

Bananas.

I don't think I got enough kudos for this post, so I'm posting it again.

C'mon guys this was gold.

If you really mean to compete, you got to ramp up your kudos whore game way more than this.