You object to my "phraseology" , too bad.
Mo, if you think my objection was to your "phraseology," then I guess that just goes to show how difficult it is to discuss this issue in any meaningful way. That was not the basis of my objection.
Let me see if I can clarify my comment some. My comments are simply addressed to what "could be considered trolling." That's the substance. I am not particularly concerned with whatever "catchphrase" (whether it's "disrupting the natural flow," or anything else) one might to assign "summarize" a proposed new way of deciding that a particular behavior "could be considered trolling." My observation was that I could not see how adding a comment to an existing thread could be considered "trolling" just because it had the incidental effect of momentarily becoming the most recent post in the thread.
You did not even address that substantive point, at first. You still haven't that I can see, but maybe I’m missing something. You have added some new content to your post that seems to go beyond questions of definitions, so let me address those comments. You added:
Aint, making a SINGLE post in a thread is NOT the issue here. The issue is CONSECUTIVE posts in a thread. Part of the issue (at least as it originally started out) had to do with the TIME FRAME of these consecutive posts. As has been said before, CONTEXT COUNTS. If a guy doesn't post for a week, and then revisits an older topic with a single new post, that is different than making continuous, consecutive posts in a topic that nobody else is responding to.
I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at there or if it's intended to elaborate on the "disruption" that you suggest occurs automatically because the machinery shows posts in the time order they occur. But since it is in all caps, I take it that the TIME FRAME is important to you. I also take it that the question of whether or not some other party "is responding" seems important to you. It could be that the two are related for you, i.e., that the TIME FRAME involved between the time a post is made and the time (if any) that a poster "responds" or otherwise enters a new post into the thread, is crucial to you, I'm not really sure.
Just to help with the "CONTEXT," Let me summarize, to a relatively brief degree, the warning I got, and the circumstances which led to it being issued. The warning referred to the "Morman Hypothetical" thread, but contained references to page numbers in that thread which did not exist (for me, at least). You may recall this thread. You, and quite a few others, made some contributions to it. At some point, based on a comment made by Edgewriter which was basically scoffed at by Sharpie, as I recall, the thread took a turn toward the question of whether or not "atheism" can be viewed as a "religion." Toward the end of that thread (which appears to be where at least some of my allegedly objectionable posting occurred) the major participants had been reduced to me and Eric, although you and others were still involved to a lesser extent.
The warning I got asserted that: "you have 16 of the current 23 posts, including one group of 6 in a row and another of 5 in a row." Again, it was not clear just what the particular 23 posts being referred to are, but I have just now taken the time to try to figure out which ones they were. Kicky said this would be “easy” to do, but it has in fact taken me the better part of an hour to do so.
I got this message at 5:43 A. M. on 7-8, and since it speaks in the current tense I am guessing that the last post counted in the 23 post sequence in question was one I made at 8:13 P.M. on 7-7. If I count back 23 posts from there, I come to a post that Marcus made at 8:17 P.M on 7-6. In that sequence I count 15 posts made by me, one of which was deliberately left blank for legibility purposes, so really 14. All of this occurs over a 24-hour period.
Prior to making my first post in this 23-post long sequence, I had not made a post since about 8:00 P.M. the night before—about a 15 hour period. In the interim, Sharpie, Raspberry Delight (twice), Marcus, and you, Mo, all made posts, almost all of which were addressed to comments I had made before I left the thread for the night. I was not there to immediately respond to them of course, although I did address some later in the thread.
But the first thing I did was make a couple of posts that were directed to the discussion itself rather than particular posters: one quoting from atheists.org and one quoting from Richard Dawkins' website. In my view, these two posts added a LOT more to the advancement and stimulation of the general topic than the 6 posts that been made while I was gone, but that's probably just my own self-bias. Eric works, and, although he appears to have made a couple of posts during his lunch break, most of his posts are made after 5:00 P.M., so I certainly didn’t expect him to “immediately respond” to any of the posts I was making that were intended primarily for his reading and consideration.
As far as “CONSECUTIVE" posts go: On 7-7 I made 6 consecutive posts in a 46 minute period between 12:18 and 1:04. Just prior to that, at 12:11, Eric had made a post in response to me and my first two posts were directed to that particular comment (the two could have been combined, I suppose, but I had received no warnings and thought nothing of it at the time). Those two posts were followed by quotations from an article I was reading on the web about the relationship between secularism and religion, which were posted for general consideration by Eric or anyone else interested in the discussion. The last two were addressed to you, Mo. Although one of those posts specifically quoted a prior (joking) post of yours, they were both just joking posts on my part—which you may have strongly resented, I dunno, but, if so, I’m sorry.
Then Eric made another post at 1:07 P.M. which responded to one of my posts. Thereafter he did not return to the thread until 5:36 P.M., when he made his next comment. In the intervening 4-5 hours, I made a total of 5 posts, one of which one intentionally left blank, so 4, really. Of those 4, 2 were addressed to Eric’s last point, one answered a question posed to me in a previous post by Sharpie, and the final one merely noted the hateful rep hit I received for the 3rd post, and asked if Sharpie had given it to me.
If there is any more to the “CONTEXT” that you think is important here, Mo. Please feel free to point it out. If not, is there something in particular about the TIME FRAME which you think makes these posts particularly intolerable. Eric begin responding again after he got back from work. Does it bother you, or other mods that he did not respond immediately? It is really not accurate to say that “nobody is responding” to my posts, just because no one responds until later. But even if no one responds, is that a reason not to make a post in the first place? Can’t people find something of value to consider in a post even if they don’t personally respond, whether immediately, or ever? How I can I know if, or when, anyone will respond when I make a post? I can’t know, best I can tell. Should that deter me from making a post to begin with?
I'm going to suggest that the word DELIBERATE be REMOVED from the definition…At some point, you either accept [the rules] as they are, or you continue making the same mistakes and find yourself with additional infractions. It's your choice.
Well, Mo, eliminating any standards of intent will certainly give the mods more license to simply say “trollin IS whatever we happen to say it is,” I spoze. Do me a favor, if you don’t mind: If you become aware of any significant changes in the rules being made in the future, can you make some kind of “public announcement” out of it? I don’t review the rules every time I log in as a matter of habit to see if they have changed, and I doubt anyone else does either.