Uninsured Father Dies of Toothache

[Ronja]

My argument remains. You let me know whether a FIFY of some sort is a requirement or not. I'll take it from there.

There is no requirement upon anyone on this forum to truthfully quote another member, or indicate that they have "fixed" or altered the quote in any way. If, however, someone was repeatedly misquoting another member with intent to maliciously misrepresent, and not in a light-hearted fashion, it could be seen as harrassment and would fall under the usual rules. In this one particular instance, the only problem I can see is that the acronym "FIFY" was not well-known, so wasn't immediately spotted as being marked as "fixed".

It's a cheap and unethical ploy

Yes, and you're quite at liberty to treat it as such.

Is that an official ruling or a personal opinion?

I would venture a guess that it is as close to a staff consensus as we are ever likely to get here (in fact I was writing a post with very much the same content, only TA beat me to it).

Just remember: stay within the rules. Preferably clearly within the rules, please. (which, of course, goes for everybody - personal attack is personal attack and harassment is harassment regardless of the tool(s) one uses to implement one's not-playing-nice)

[Seth]

Is that an official rule or a personal opinion?

It is now an official rule of the forum that it's perfectly okay to change or deliberately misquote another member in any context whatsoever without restraint. You're free to do so as much as you like, for any reason, and there will be no official action taken by the Mods or the Staff for doing so, no matter how egregious the circumstance or how harassing the behavior.

Thanks, glad to hear it.


Edit (by Ronja)
Edit (by Seth)

Edited to make the point that abuse of moderator authority doesn't change the unintended consequences of the non-rule.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Much as it pains me, I have to agree with Seth.

I've never seen FIFY before, and I've wasted plenty of my life on this site. Plenty of readers wouldn't get it.
The "fixed" smiley is ok, so long as the original text is there with a line through it. It should be absolutely clear what's been done.
If it can be misunderstood, it's not really on, I think. And plenty of people won't get FIFY, especially if the original words are removed.

If you enforce that part I'd have to stop posting.

Folks, I ignore Seth's teacup typhoons. You should consider that as an option.

[Ronja]

Is that an official rule or a personal opinion?

It is now an official rule of the forum that it's perfectly okay to change or deliberately misquote another member in any context whatsoever without restraint. You're free to do so as much as you like, for any reason, and there will be no official action taken by the Mods or the Staff for doing so, no matter how egregious the circumstance or how harassing the behavior.

Thanks, glad to hear it.


Edit (by Ronja)
Edit (by Seth)

Edited to make the point that abuse of moderator authority doesn't change the unintended consequences of the non-rule.

Seth, you really are unusually gifted in gaining sympathy and then shooting it to pieces at first opportunity.

As I am personally involved now, I'll leave this to the others on the staff to ponder. They have a copy of what the post looked like after my edit, BTW).

[Thinking Aloud]

My argument remains. You let me know whether a FIFY of some sort is a requirement or not. I'll take it from there.

There is no requirement upon anyone on this forum to truthfully quote another member, or indicate that they have "fixed" or altered the quote in any way. If, however, someone was repeatedly misquoting another member with intent to maliciously misrepresent, and not in a light-hearted fashion, it could be seen as harrassment and would fall under the usual rules. In this one particular instance, the only problem I can see is that the acronym "FIFY" was not well-known, so wasn't immediately spotted as being marked as "fixed".

It's a cheap and unethical ploy

Yes, and you're quite at liberty to treat it as such.

Is that an official ruling or a personal opinion?

It's my personal interpretation of the rules as they stand.

[Seth]

Is that an official rule or a personal opinion?

It is now an official rule of the forum that it's perfectly okay to change or deliberately misquote another member in any context whatsoever without restraint. You're free to do so as much as you like, for any reason, and there will be no official action taken by the Mods or the Staff for doing so, no matter how egregious the circumstance or how harassing the behavior.

Thanks, glad to hear it.


Edit (by Ronja)
Edit (by Seth)

Edited to make the point that abuse of moderator authority doesn't change the unintended consequences of the non-rule.

Seth, you really are unusually gifted in gaining sympathy and then shooting it to pieces at first opportunity.

As I am personally involved now, I'll leave this to the others on the staff to ponder. They have a copy of what the post looked like after my edit, BTW).

What's the problem? It's just a little satire and parody. After all, as somebody recently said:

a) we are all public figures on RatZ in the sense that we are here voluntarily and make ourselves public (visible) in this community by posting
b) it should become clear to any member during their first days here that parody and teasing are one major theme in the culture of this forum - if one does not like to be laughed at from time to time, one is in a very wrong place on RatZ
c) the fixes usually are parodies and most of them could not reasonably be taken as true. For example, PS's "RAH RAH RAH" quote^^ was so over the top that one would have to be seriously demented to even begin to consider it a real quote

What's got your knickers in a twist? I left in the FIFY fairy and made explicit notice that your edit had been edited. That's more than you were interested in granting to me. The fact that you can edit MY POST using your Mod authority, rather than quoting it and then editing it is an abuse of your Mod authority in my view, so I thought I'd return the favor by falsely pretending to be a Mod editing a Mod edited post just because I could.

Isn't it clear to you that parody and teasing are one of the major themes in the culture of this forum?

[Thinking Aloud]

I was amused.

[Seth]

My argument remains. You let me know whether a FIFY of some sort is a requirement or not. I'll take it from there.

There is no requirement upon anyone on this forum to truthfully quote another member, or indicate that they have "fixed" or altered the quote in any way. If, however, someone was repeatedly misquoting another member with intent to maliciously misrepresent, and not in a light-hearted fashion, it could be seen as harrassment and would fall under the usual rules. In this one particular instance, the only problem I can see is that the acronym "FIFY" was not well-known, so wasn't immediately spotted as being marked as "fixed".

It's a cheap and unethical ploy

Yes, and you're quite at liberty to treat it as such.

Is that an official ruling or a personal opinion?

It's my personal interpretation of the rules as they stand.

Thanks.

[Seth]

I was amused.

See, parody and satire. Relax, Ronja, nobody's mad at anybody.

[mistermack]

There is no requirement upon anyone on this forum to truthfully quote another member, or indicate that they have "fixed" or altered the quote in any way.

Well, there should be. If you deliberately misquote someone, you are lying.
Maybe deliberately lying isn't that awful, but deliberately lying about other members is.

How is that "playing nice" ?
I'm not referring to this incident. But if it's plainly deliberate, I can't see why it should be within the rules.
(excepting posts clearly labelled and with the original text ruled through, obviously.)

[Thinking Aloud]

There is no requirement upon anyone on this forum to truthfully quote another member, or indicate that they have "fixed" or altered the quote in any way.

Well, there should be. If you deliberately misquote someone, you are lying.
Maybe deliberately lying isn't that awful, but deliberately lying about other members is.

How is that "playing nice" ?
I'm not referring to this incident. But if it's plainly deliberate, I can't see why it should be within the rules.

Correct - if it's done deliberately and maliciously, it's most definitely not "playing nice", and is therefore covered by the rules as they stand. There are probably a thousand other things that could be done deliberately by one member to another, but if we covered all of them individually in the rules, it would get a little unweildy to say the least. Hence the more nebulous concept of "playing nice".

Aside from this particular incident, which seems to me to have been partly a misunderstanding of the use of an unfamiliar acronym (FIFY), I can't recall a time when someone has deliberately misquoted someone with the intent of deceiving others as to what was originally said.

Of course, the benefit of this forum software is that the original text (that was quoted and adjusted) will still be available for comparison - so any such attempts at deception are immediately apparent. That's pretty damning evidence against the offender - and is plain for everyone to see and comment upon publicly.

[Schneibster]

Schneibster, repeatedly accusing someone of gaming the system and implying that they are jackbooted thugs, is not playing nice (not to mention, gaming the system!). This is a reminder to please stay within the rules.

In fact, I did it precisely to show exactly what's been shown. And note that I didn't (and won't) continue to insist on ejection for it being a bannable offense. I would be within my rights to do that.

Because it was done to me first.

It's called mirroring.

If you're writing moderator warnings to me about it, why not Seth?

ETA: And I note that Seth talking you into issuing some sort, any sort, of a warning to me is Seth successfully gaming the system.

EATA: And when Seth is gaming the system, accusing Seth of gaming the system is in fact pointing out what Seth is doing. If that's going to be a problem I won't be here long.

And finally, by allowing Seth to do this you are endangering the system. I will leave if you continue.

[mistermack]

Go to your room !!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Seth]

Schneibster, repeatedly accusing someone of gaming the system and implying that they are jackbooted thugs, is not playing nice (not to mention, gaming the system!). This is a reminder to please stay within the rules.

In fact, I did it precisely to show exactly what's been shown. And note that I didn't (and won't) continue to insist on ejection for it being a bannable offense. I would be within my rights to do that.

For all the good it would do you. I can't get them to mandate something as simple as using the strikeout function, fat chance they are going to make it a "bannable offense" to annoy you.

I would be marginally interested in finding out exactly how you define "gaming the system" and what, exactly you think "the system" is though. You keep using this abstruse term without providing even a tiny bit of information as to what you mean by it. It makes you sound rather ignorant when you do that, you know, when you act like everyone ought to understand some "system theory" you've dreamed up.

Because it was done to me first.

It's called mirroring.

If you're writing moderator warnings to me about it, why not Seth?

ETA: And I note that Seth talking you into issuing some sort, any sort, of a warning to me is Seth successfully gaming the system.

So, "gaming the system" is provisionally defined as "making note of instances in which Schneibster has called members jackbooted thugs and engaged in obtuse and recondite accusations of 'gaming the system'." I see.

EATA: And when Seth is gaming the system, accusing Seth of gaming the system is in fact pointing out what Seth is doing. If that's going to be a problem I won't be here long.

Promise? Cross your heart and hope to die?

And finally, by allowing Seth to do this you are endangering the system. I will leave if you continue.

Oh joy, oh frabjous day!