You're barking up the wrong tree there, Rin Tin Tin.
I really wish I had been, Bronco70. However, reading this thread carefully only confirms what I had first determined.
Of course, rather than start up saying I misunderstood the situation, you could have, perhaps, at least asked what I meant, what my impressions were, etc. However, I'm sure it was much easier to presume I'm a moron who couldn't read and didn't care to understand what's going on, despite the fact I'm probably one of the four smartest people on the board. After all, that would make much more sense than my exhibing anger over what I consider to be a petty and arbitrary rule, all-but-designed to affect one particular, unpopular poster.
Since I know people are going to ask, colton, Atheist Preacher, and wiggle room for one other poster who might be in the group without my knowing it. If the reader feela left out, assume you are in the wiggle room, or just tough it out.
Puh-lease.
One Brow, please leave off the snide comments directed at the moderators. Especially when you get the facts wrong that you are complaining about.
colton, when you can point out any particular fact that I have wrong on situation, I'll take your caution more seriously. Instead, you and moevillini have, in the course of the subsequent posts, confirmed that I correctly interpreted the facts. You apparently do intend to enforce some standard of using the quote tool instead of quotation marks, and will be willing at some point, when a poster in not cooperative enough, to issue warnings and infractions based upon this standard. I can offer no interpretation of this except that it functions as a sort of yarmulke tax. The use of quotation marks was an acceptable standard for multi-paragraph quotes when I was in high school, in college, and even today in the occasional newspaper I come across. People who have trouble with them should take it as a challenge to improve their reading skills.
You are acting as Hopper's tool, and it's not pretty.
Since you brought this up, and I apologize to Hopper for revealing in public what he said privately, I'll make this clear: Hopper asked me to back off when I first discussed my annoyance over this. I have no more inclination to follow his advice now than I do on any other topic we discuss. My feelings toward Hopper are, at best, neutral. That does not change in the slightest that the quotation policy is ill-conceived and unfair.
All of them.
Edit: or maybe just most of them. His first sentence was undoubtedly correct.
Again, I await for you to present these incorrect facts.
OK, fine. I've got time for one more post before I go to bed.
Marcus's sig: "“the basketball gods were thinking about me” ~ Al Jefferson on his coming to Utah"
One Brow's statement: "Marcus, you should be carful with that signature. Word from on high is that the use of quotation marks, as opposed to quote balloons, makes these threads more difficult to read. I would hate for you to get a warning for that."
The implication is that Marcus is running a risk of getting a warning for the sig. That's completely false, and One Brow knows it. Or should know it. Therefore One Brow had his facts wrong.
And it was a very snide comment, like I said, made SOLELY as a jab at the moderators. That's what ticked me off about it and prompted my response.
You'll need to make up your mind, here. Either you think I sincerely believed Marcus would get such a warning for a one-line signature, or I was making a snide comment. They can not both be true (although they can both be false).
I'll save you the trouble of trying to figure that out. My purpose was two-fold: 1) announce one of the most bizarre, arbitrary, and silly rules I have ever seen put forth on this forum (since it had not been widely distributed), and 2) register my strong disapproval at the rule. I accomplished both goals.
I personally have never seen every single paragraph set off separately by quotes in a multi-paragraph quote that I recall. Either way, I would know they were quoting, until I saw the "endquote" marks.
I beleive colton it referring to the practice of using only the inital quote mark at the beginning of a paragraph which is a continued quote. I agree that is the standard practice, and those marks are helpful.
For example, referring to the following four paragrphs as a single quote:
"Of course, rather than start up saying I misunderstood the situation, you could have, perhaps, at least asked what I meant, what my impressions were, etc. However, I'm sure it was much easier to presume I'm a moron who couldn't read and didn't care to understand what's going on, despite the fact I'm probably one of the three smartest people on the board. After all, that would make much more sense than my exhibing anger over what I consider to be a petty and arbitrary rule, all-but-designed to affect one particular, unpopular poster.
"Since you brought this up, and I apologize to Hopper for revealing in public what he said privately, I'll make this clear: Hopper asked me to back off when I first discussed my annoyance over this. I have no more inclination to follow his advice now than I do on any other topic we discuss. My feelings toward Hopper are, at best, neutral. That does not change in the slightest that the quotation policy is ill-conceived and unfair.
"You'll need to make up your mind, here. Either you think I sincerely believed Marcus would get such a warning for a one-line signature, or I was making a snide comment. They can not both be true (although they can both be false).
"I'll save you the trouble of trying to figure that out. My purpose was two-fold: 1) announce one of the most bizarre, arbitrary, and silly rules I have ever seen put forth on this forum (since it had not been widely distributed), and 2) register my strong disapproval at the rule. I accoplished both goals."
The inital quote marks do emphasize the continuation, and are not that hard to add.
you don't see a problem but others do. that's the bottom line. as has been stated, it is subjective. and a number of people do feel it makes it difficult to identify those posrtions of a post that are quotes and those that are not. that's the bottom line.
same situation applies on other issues - such as pornography or other content deemed "inappropriate". doesn't much matter what the person who makes the post thinks, what matters is what the moderating staff thinks. that's just how it works - here and on just about every other message board that I know of.
The difference is that, while I disagree personally with the policy, I at least understand the rationale behind a site being family-friendly, and therefore keeping material not considered family-friendly off the board. The only rationale here seems to be that people have trouble understanding the posts. Will there be correct-typing rules in the future? I won't last long if there are. Certainly bad typing affects the readability of the board more than the use of quotation marks as opposed to quote tags. Perhaps typing standards are even now being discussed by the moderators?
I can probably name five other regular writing habits that affect the readability of the board more greatly than the use of quotations marks. Can we get a list of all the habits that are being discussed? Or, perchance, is the one habit under discussion the exact same habit used primarily by one particular, unpopular poster on the board, and no other poster?
FWIW, this is the response that I gave to One Brow privately when he gave me substantially the same quoted section cited by Hopper:
I will put in my reply.
Sirkickyass said:
Well, as an intial matter I would say right off the bat that your "warning" to Marcus is not supported by the quote you were asked to interpret given that his small quote is neither large nor a block of text surrounded by other text.
Honestly, the very notion that you think there is some sort of reasonableness to the idea of requiring quote blocks over quotation marks, and further that you can make a distinction between the uses of quotation marks that do and do not interfere with readability, says something about the level of cognitive dissonence you are employing in this. From my perspective, I just see a (metaphorical) yarmulke tax.
I have been debating with myself whether I really need to confirm point-by-point that your interpretation already matched my initial understanding of the situation. I am trying to take the brief path for now.
Sirkickyass said:
Griping about an advisory paragraph will probably only serve to enhance the perception that he's purposely "not getting it" that already exists.
I came to the exact same conclusion he did about that paragraph, as far as I can tell: if he does not use the quote function in the manner you have described, but insteads continues to quote material, interspersed with comments, using quotation marks, this continued behavior could eventually be the sole cause of receiving warnings and infractions, after sufficient attempts have been made to get him to use the quote tags instead.
I really hope I was wrong in this interpretation, frankly. If you assure me that this would never happen, or even at least you personally would vote against issuing a warning/infraction over an issue like using quotation marks instead of quote tags, I will gladly eat a huge pile of crow in a thread created for that purpose. I see the discussion thread has grown to 9 pages, maybe I will even see that acknowledgement there.
However, I have the sinking feeling I did not misinterpret. That would be greatly disappointing to me.
Unfortunately, my sinking feeling was confirmed.
Given how frequently One Brow takes Hopper specifically to task for his use of selective quotations and bending text to suit a limited purpose, he frankly should have known better. That he took a statement about large blocks quotes and applied it to a seven word passage that's clearly attributed and surrounded by nothing frankly makes him look foolish and that's the reason you've seen disdain from the moderating staff towards that post.
The moderating staff had not shown half the disdain that was in the post I made to Marcus. If they are trying to be disdainful, they need to get on the ball. Nor did I miss your attempt to deflect the argument by trying to use Hopper's reputation for misquoting, rather than acknowledge that, minus the hyperbole, the post I made was substantially correct. There is to be an enforcement of the standard to use quote tags instead of quotations marks, and violating that standard will eventually lead to warnings, infractions, and banning if the poster does not comply.
Because in general, it does not really matter whether or not you agree with the rationale for these rules - - all that matters is that you follow them.
Does it matter when the rule seems designed to single out a poster for using a standard grammatical convention?
But - - - whatever the issues are that you have with board readability, and whatever it is that causes it, you are the only one actively complaining and actively trying to challenge the moderators' interpretation of the rules to suit your own personal taste.
I have counted at least four other posters (including me) who have challenged the standard directly or by ridicule.
and why should the rules be changed to suit his style of posting when it seems most other posters are able to follow the standard format when they make a post.
More importantly, why should they be changed to reject his style of posting, even though it conforms to standard usage?
Do you how annoying it is to open up a thread and see 14 out of 18 posts by you? Almost as bad as when you're on ignore and you have to filter through 14 blocks of, "Hopper is currently on your ignore list." How do you not see that?
When I mentioned that I found it annoying your signature was not a proper quote, did you change it so as not to annoy me? All you would need to do would be remove the parentheses and add an ellipses. It would be just a funny and rude. As of this moment, the answer is no. I'm not the type to complain the moderators about my annoyances, though. I know people get misquoted for all kinds of reasons, and I prefer to take responsibility for my reactions to minor annoyances. Should I make an exception here?
Anyhow, I am here to give you my full support of banning yourself. And I thought TaterBoob was pathetic. Just end it dude, we all hate you. (except Clutch)
It's more important to defend and support the people you don't like than the people you do.
Do you even realize that you have just publicly called One Brow a deliberate liar?
Thanks for pointing that out, but I hope you did not feel it was needed for my sake. Sometimes I get delayed, but I almost always respond in my own defense.
Why do I have to wait until tomorrow to find out who's pitching?
The way I see it, Hopper is being targeted because he simply irritates people which is understandable. His posting style irritates me as well.
I agree, with the proviso that I think much of the targetting is not deliberate.
https://onebrow.blogspot.com/
I'm glad there's no needless worrying about some perceived social stigma.
Why would you bring up that quote from that blog?
What's to stop him from simply making a new account 5 minutes after his "ban" and doing the same thing (posting and posting and posting.
1) Hopper has a personal sense of honor, and whatever I may think it lacks, it will keep him from returning after being banned. After his previous banning, I don't recall ever coming across someone we thought was a "Hopper clone". The same can not be said of many, more popular, posters.
2) Duplicate accounts do get banned, without argument, when they are detected.
