Arathain Kelvar wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
You're responsible for your own actions assumes there's a known standard of what's acceptable and what's not.
Not really. You're responsible for what you say whether there's a standard or not. Yes, if there is no standard, you're not breaking some rule, but you're still responsible for what you say whether it's nice, rude, within some standard or without.
It has nothing to do with board rules. First of all, the local standard in a large part determines what's considered nice and what's considered rude, and second, if rudeness is acceptable, you are far less responsible for it if someone gets offended; a lot of the responsibility shifts to them for hanging out in a place where that level of rudeness was known to be tolerated.
If the main reason rudeness is the accepted standard in a particular place is the intractable behavior of one person, then they are largely responsible for the rudeness at large.
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I don't disagree. But would you expect those who do not cuss to bother hanging around with their kids? Therein lies the problem. There's no standard, but the lack of consideration and respect for others is driving members away.
Yes, to a degree it is, and the reason here is so little consideration and respect for others is that one guy who had none of either was allowed to remain despite his world-class standing in that regard... for years on end.
There's also the issue that some people here are simply more sensitive than others, and there is no reason that the level o discourse needs to be at the level of the most sensitive people. It doesn't need to be at the level of the biggest assholes here either, but some people are simply notorious for getting offended.
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Come on, now. Nobody's suggesting that anyone refrain from telling someone something they don't want to hear. There's more than one way to say something. "I don't think that's a good idea" vs. "you're retarded".
Quite. And yet, in the thread in question, people were saying the former, and not the latter. There have been other threads as well where advice has been given without anyone saying "you're retarded" or where at least most people aren't acting like that as well; it's not as if the chemistry thread was some abberition of politeness.
The fact remains, however, that "you're responsible for your own actions" is, well, irrelevant. Obviously people are responsible for what they say, but they're also responsible for when they freak out at what someone else says. More importantly, people are responsible for when they choose to ignore reasoned argument in favor of turning things into a screaming match, and Monty was responsible for doing that with such incredible regularity that he caused it to become the board standard.