[HEADING=2]Mod Voice[/HEADING]
Im Lang:
Insulting people is not a viable way to correct their behaviour when you cannot impose real world consequences that they are likely to care about. Even then, unless you're getting them fairly young and can perform some sort of conditioning exercise on them, it's unlikely to have lasting effect absent the constant presence of the coercion. If you assume that the people who you are insulting have malign intentions, then it's like wrestling with a pig - the pig enjoys it, that's what he's there for. If you assume their intentions are benign, then insulting them just makes them less likely to work with you.
If you want to break an adult that way, you need to be able to control their environment to a degree that you can't here. Alternate pleasure and pain - or the absence of pleasure - blow their mind one moment, ignore them the next on some randomised basis, cut them off from other forms of socialising, etc. There are a bunch of ways to do it, but they require fairly significant influence over someone, either something that they allow you because of some value they believe you add or something you can impose on them. It's a lot like those mobile games and gambling actually.
But I digress:
Fox12, who you are well aware I have spoken to about his own conduct, reflected your own behaviour back at you, and the tone of the rest of the thread was not noticeably ameliorated by your insults. To expand upon your drowning man analogy, you're both drowning. It's just that one of you shot someone while the other one went upstairs. Put more simply: You only get to stand by results to excuse your actions if you have some.
As for the matter of the tone of the thread itself, it's hard to judge. If people meant exactly what they typed, you'd not be mistaken. But hyperbole is a thing. I suspect that you and Fox12 are reading the exact same thing with two different tones projected onto it and much of your disagreement arises from that. Though it's largely besides the point which of you is correct since there are other ways to judge the tone of a discussion and address it than jumping directly in with the insults.
You may, of course, be right in the more general sense. Perhaps my course of action entails pyrrhic results; moderating a tomb, etc... But your post has not convinced me of this. This isn't the first forum I've moderated, you're not the first user to respond in this manner to actions of this nature, and I don't think this is the exception. At some low-level of probability there's always going to be that risk, of course, but that will be true for any course of action and is consequently no reason to favour your position over my past experiences.
In pithy terms: Anyone can threaten a consequence, sometimes you have to actually show that you are capable of delivering that consequence. Otherwise, all discussion goes to the person who can most quickly threaten the most extreme outcome.
Im Lang:
Insulting people is not a viable way to correct their behaviour when you cannot impose real world consequences that they are likely to care about. Even then, unless you're getting them fairly young and can perform some sort of conditioning exercise on them, it's unlikely to have lasting effect absent the constant presence of the coercion. If you assume that the people who you are insulting have malign intentions, then it's like wrestling with a pig - the pig enjoys it, that's what he's there for. If you assume their intentions are benign, then insulting them just makes them less likely to work with you.
If you want to break an adult that way, you need to be able to control their environment to a degree that you can't here. Alternate pleasure and pain - or the absence of pleasure - blow their mind one moment, ignore them the next on some randomised basis, cut them off from other forms of socialising, etc. There are a bunch of ways to do it, but they require fairly significant influence over someone, either something that they allow you because of some value they believe you add or something you can impose on them. It's a lot like those mobile games and gambling actually.
But I digress:
Fox12, who you are well aware I have spoken to about his own conduct, reflected your own behaviour back at you, and the tone of the rest of the thread was not noticeably ameliorated by your insults. To expand upon your drowning man analogy, you're both drowning. It's just that one of you shot someone while the other one went upstairs. Put more simply: You only get to stand by results to excuse your actions if you have some.
As for the matter of the tone of the thread itself, it's hard to judge. If people meant exactly what they typed, you'd not be mistaken. But hyperbole is a thing. I suspect that you and Fox12 are reading the exact same thing with two different tones projected onto it and much of your disagreement arises from that. Though it's largely besides the point which of you is correct since there are other ways to judge the tone of a discussion and address it than jumping directly in with the insults.
You may, of course, be right in the more general sense. Perhaps my course of action entails pyrrhic results; moderating a tomb, etc... But your post has not convinced me of this. This isn't the first forum I've moderated, you're not the first user to respond in this manner to actions of this nature, and I don't think this is the exception. At some low-level of probability there's always going to be that risk, of course, but that will be true for any course of action and is consequently no reason to favour your position over my past experiences.
In pithy terms: Anyone can threaten a consequence, sometimes you have to actually show that you are capable of delivering that consequence. Otherwise, all discussion goes to the person who can most quickly threaten the most extreme outcome.