I'm not a mod but I suspect you started out in a strong position, with your stylometric brother Fernando -- who doesn't have a lot of time right now -- making real change to a rule that now forbids questioning the motives of the OP poster, which from Shades' commentary may extend to other commentary about the OP poster if it implies a motive about the posting of the OP. Frankly, I'm not sure how close I am here.Sara H wrote: ↑Wed Jul 19, 2023 3:09 pmWould one of the moderators be so kind to explain to me what is actually going on in my thread and what post are acceptable per board rules and which ones are not? I was going to ask my opening question in the terrestrial on my first thread, but didn't want to derail my own thread. I'm hearing the moderators say as of late, if you have a off topic question or answer, start a new thread, so that's what I did. Res and Marcus posted very nicely and seemed like they genuinely wanted to have a civil conversation. To me that's how a thread should progress. But after their post I have had my motives questioned, told that the history of the board doesn't matter even though it does to me, and I have been told what the board is for when I'm quite capable of determining how to use the board just as everyone else that post here. I've been told what to post, apparently I'm not smart enough to figure out what to post about. And now I have been called a Karen without actually being called a Karen so the poster who actually called me a Karen didn't technically break a board rule.
How did an innocent thread with such a simple question turn into me feeling like I need to defend my integrity? Wasn't a rule just changed so this situation wouldn't happen anymore?
Fernando's rule, as I will call it, opens the way for stylometric siblings of his to start new posts for the sake of trolling, and nobody is allowed to publicly suggest that it's trolling, or that the OP is a sock; at least I think this is right.
And so binger, mike, and Ceeboo have scored a point. I admit it was a sly move by Fernando. I'm not sure he outsmarted the mods, but the mods are very good people who will allow the perception of being outsmarted for the sake of a small chance of sincerity, they go the extra mile to give benefit to the doubt.
A sly play however, isn't a victory. Fernando's rule leaves open some serious challenges to trolling and disruption. From what I can tell, and I admit I'm not a mod, Fernando's rule can only seriously protect the OP to the extent that the OP originator doesn't go off topic themselves. And so take, for instance, my comments to you. I constrained my responses to your own derailing. If the OP permits the off topic by pursuing it themselves, or creates their own off-topic content then others are free to continue it.
The other problem an exploiter of Fernando's rule might have is tone trolling within their thread. Tone trolling not only (likely, per my understanding) opens up the thread for others to debate tone, but may make it harder to get rid of the off-topic commentary, because, in my opinion, it shows that the off-topic was welcomed -- perhaps baited -- just so the post originator can cry foul loudly and publicly and get the interlocutor penalized. To avoid crying to mods over every potential infraction as a way of continuing a troll agenda, it's my opinion that the mods prefer the report feature be silently used.
And so it's possible, the mods are playing 4d chess, even though I'm not sure in this case, because it seems to me that Fernando's rule will still require some discipline from the OP poster if they want to troll, and may result in a hollow victory where off-topic comments are silently removed with no vibrato from the originator nor extraneous commentary, and we're left with a thread that nobody really wants to discuss including the OP originator that floats its way to page 2 and beyond.