Eosian Wrote:Self defense only works if your life was in danger, or you can legitimately claim to have felt it was. You're perfectly safe from cyber-flames, so firing back is never truly a defensive tactic, it's trying to out-offensive the other side until they back down.
...that's not the point. Your punishment for punching someone would be invariably worse if you're the aggressor. The law may be that "your life must be in danger" but most sensible judges won't put you away if you were only defending yourself (judge judy being one of the exceptions, haha. (Also punishment would be completely circumstantial. Of course you'd probably end up with a lawsuit if you busted someones tooth or something in retaliation.)) And I never claimed that "firing-back" was defensive, but it was the result of repeated aggravation, just as it would be if someone snapped at you in real life for being obnoxious. Being annoyed at someone and saying something as mild as "you're dumb" shouldn't be weighed the same as a malicious attack.
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IsaacGS Wrote:On this respect, there are already situations where I do take this into account. For example, the vast majority of the time, if someone had previously no infractions, especially if they're a new user, and they have done something wrong, then I'll give them a warning first, prompting them to review the rules so that they can avoid receiving a full infraction in the future. This is pretty much the only case where I can reasonably take the circumstances of the situation into account. It's too much to ask that we review the entire post history of everyone in the dispute before dealing out any infractions. By the time such a thorough investigation were finished, people would be complaining about receiving infractions about posts they made weeks into the past. I see your point but I just don't think it's a reasonable expectation. In your example there, the proper thing to do would probably have been to report the thread, or at least mention it to one of the mods so that they could look over the thread or that person as a whole. Almost everyone's going to believe their trolling accusation is accurate, so they'd all feel as fully justified to post it as you did. That just puts us back at square one, with "troll" being thrown around like crazy. Hell, if you really wanted to, you could put together a pile of evidence of why this person is a troll and include it with your report. Bottom line is, no matter how sure you are, it's against the rules to call someone a troll.
For the record I actually did do this on IRC and Fiel completely dismissed it.
And as a moderator/admin it's your job to be paying attention to the users. Some users will slip under your radar, of course, but that's why there's a TEAM. You shouldn't have to review anyone's entire history but you should be able to put two and two together just from general posting habits. Even as a regular member I could sum up most other members and what their intentions are when posting because it's usually very obvious. If I say I'm against improperly calling people trolls and argue about it countless times, when the time comes that I actually call someone a troll that should be taken into account. The trolling accusation rule should be a deterrent from using the word all of the time like what was happening, not from using the word when appropriate.