yoric's last comment to Adam Smascher— an ad hominem after Adam had said he had dropped the argument— was over the line in my view. It was a personal insult and looked to me like an attempt to provoke Adam after he had walked away. I sent a PM to yoric warning him that if he continues with the ad hominems, I'm going to recommend that he be banned from the wiki (for a duration to be determined).
There is no ad hominem attack in my post, at all. Frankly, this looks like yet another case of "let's flip out at yoric for doing something we'd be totally okay with coming from anyone else at all" to me, and I'm not okay with that. In short, this is a severe and unwarranted overreaction.
I should point out here that this is by no means any sort of accusation toward quik or toward anyone else of misconduct or intentional bias. However, I do feel that my overblown bullshit reputation as an asshole has grossly affected my treatment in regard to disciplinary situations in the recent past.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've been inundated with recommendations for bans lately. I'm feeling attacked. I don't feel that my treatment of late has been fair or right, and am not really certain what I can or should do. Support would be appreciated; advice more so. I have put a lot of work into the SCP community, and I want to continue to contribute, but I'm feeling distinctly as though my contributions are not welcome. So, there's all my cards on the table. Talk to me.
Knock off the attitude. We don't want to ban you or anything. The issue it that you've been displaying a vary bad attitude overall lately. I don't suggest any bans further than the ones in effect already, but I warn you as a moderator: this can't keep happening. Don't like an SCP, fine. But attacks on other users for no apparent reason are simply unacceptable.
Yeah, I mean I think that it's no secret to anyone involved in the site in any way that Yoric can be coarse sometimes but by no means is this a reason to ban him from the wiki, even with all of his past actions/reactions in mind. While in this instance he was being a bit of a tool, he was still asking a legitimate question from the dude. It's not like he just said to the dude "Hey fuckface. Suck a dick and die". there was still content in there, whether he was aggravating the dude or not. Yoric isn't a troll, I feel like the tone used to talk about him in recent history has been inferring that which it really kinda shouldn't.
Thanks, metaphorphosis. You've expressed that better than I could.
Yeah, banning's just a bit much at this point. I think your trigger finger's a little itchy there, Quik Draw.
Yoric, knock that shit off. Adam's response was overly confrontational, yes, but you're only winding him up. That makes matters worse, and only leads to more of this nonsense. If someone says you're out of line, well, you should probably listen. You've had a lot of difficulty judging that for yourself. It wouldn't kill you to err on the side of politeness.
Gods, what a can of worms I've opened. But yes, banned from the wiki. At least that's the stated punishment for a second infraction of "Excessive rudeness to another user". Granted, that's a twenty-four ban… so yeah, I worded that poorly.
But there are a couple of things about this particular comment that grated me. First, Adam had already said that he had dropped the argument. yoric apparently missed it (hey, it happens), but it looked like provocation, or could at least be interpreted as such. Coupled with the dust-up in the 166 thread (which admittedly I only saw after it happened) with the same guy… it didn't look good.
But y'know, yoric, I think I would have been okay with all that… if you hadn't called him "trollboy".
I went and looked up ad hominem, just to make sure I was using it correctly. It has two definitions: "based on or appealing to emotion rather than reason", and "directed against a person rather than against his arguments". A personal insult, an attack against the other person's character… these are ad hominem attacks. They have nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not your story is internally consistent. Also… there's some subjectivity at work here. That is, I don't see the level of trolling from Adam that you do. (I could be wrong, of course.) So from where I'm sitting, the insult seemed… overly antagonistic. (Compare to Caldwell, though, who was objectively an idiot. I will certainly call a bona fide troll a troll.)
Anyway, I can feel myself crashing and becoming less coherent, so: yoric, you're staff, set a goddamn example. No, I don't want to see you banned from the wiki, and that was a bit of overreaction on my part.
I disagree here. in this case, Yoric did NOTHING that I can see as wrong. Trollboy, as an insult, was warranted, given that Adam insulted the work, then said 'I'm out.' I would have had much the same reaction, given Adams remark was the equivalent of 'Hey, yo, your SCP sucks, it doesn't make sense, and it's stupid, but instead of giving you a chance to explain, I'm gonna claim not to want to argue and drop out of it."
Yeh, I woulda smacked a bitch there too.
That said, this conversation is done with, and should not have happened in the first place.
Admin, SCP Wiki
I'm sorry, but there's one more thing that I feel needs to be said. While yoric isn't entirely responsible for the escalation here, "trollboy", and any other insults you care to name, are never warranted, especially when uttered by a member of senior staff. Insults (calling someone a troll in particular, since it alleges that the other user is not willing to actually participate) are not conducive to good discussion and "he started it" is not an excuse for a staff member to behave in such a manner. It is the responsibility of senior, moderating, and administrative staff to tamp down sparks, not to help them to grow into brushfires.
Except in this case, the user did come off as trolling.
Admin, SCP Wiki
Humor, is an okay thing to have.
Admin, SCP Wiki
Guys, an admin declared this topic closed four posts ago. That makes Unimport, Clef, myself, and debatably Bright guilty of violating a major rule of the site. Wrist slaps all around seem better than the theoretically appropriate alternative. Let's be mature and actually drop it now.
Totally unrelated fun fact: The Beatles occasionally shouted Nazi slogans into crowds because they knew that nobody was actually listening to them.