Infraction for cazerus: Sass toward forum moderation staff (but with exceptional grammar and spelling)

• bartolimu · 02/21/09, 3:04 PM

User: cazerus
Infraction: Sass toward forum moderation staff (but with exceptional grammar and spelling)
Points: 5

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

You seem to have a great deal of disdain for Americans in general. This is a shame, as we are by and large decent people, though perhaps our appreciation of history is somewhat less than it should be. I for one remember the great debts we owe our brothers and sisters in Great Britain, including their willingness to take on superfluous Us in many words for no other reason than to make us feel comfortable having our own version of English. Such sacrifice is not forgotten by us all.

Please realize that your post cause me - and, I would wager, the majority of this site's users - only a small about of distress. Simply put, the sheer volume of persons utilizing our forums (and I think we can both agree the loss of the original Latin plural of fora is one of the saddest moments in recent linguistic history) requires that we either retain some modicum of control over the communications of our members or surrender our site to the tender mercies of everything the Internet has to offer. We have chosen the former, and unfortunately you managed to run afoul of this policy very early in your posting career.

As you have so astutely observed, we are in fact Elitist Jerks in more than simply name. We do expect better of our forum members, and the majority of them deliver on this expectation in a satisfactory manner. While most of the Internet may continue to be a wild, unsettled land of goatse and lolcats, our site endeavors (or if you prefer, endeavours) to establish something more orderly, communicative, and vastly more intelligent than the mean.

To put it bluntly, half of the people who visit our site are of below average intelligence. This is a statistical necessity, of course, as half of any population will be below the average of any statistic one cared to check. It is also our main motivating factor in attempting to elevate the level of discourse available on our board. For the record, it is my opinion that the composition and content of your private message, quoted below, illustrates you are of significantly higher than average intelligence and were simply caught unaware of the difference between this forum and most others. Our infraction system exists to give unfortunate but ultimately decent people the chance to acclimate to this difference. Sadly it most frequently serves as a way of slowly but surely removing the chaff from our posting society through a series of increasingly harsh penalties.

Despite the fact that I do not believe you to be of that second group, you have unfortunately forced my hand by committing another affront that we know affectionately as "Mod Sass." While I accept and wear with pride the title of "Grammar Nazi" (a title which is astonishingly, shamefully rare among my American compatriots thanks to a largely poor educational system, speaking both monetarily and quantitatively), I do not appreciate being compared to our more recent nemesis. This is for two reasons. First, I try to discourage the use of hyperbole on our forums. It rarely leads to anything good, leading instead to hurt feelings and further histrionics on the part of the offended party. Second, the vast majority of practicing Muslims are kind, decent people dedicated to the peaceful worship of God and appalled by the acts perpetrated by an insane few who presume to speak for their religion. The invocation of such individuals by means of comparison serves only to further build up false stereotypes injurious to all involved. Also, because you hurt my feelings.

No, your name will not be removed from our site's membership list. You are welcome to post here again once your unfortunately mandatory ban has been served. You are of course welcome to continue reading our forums as much as you like during this ban. Please note for future reference that my username is in fact not capitalized, so while it is not strictly a violation of grammatical protocol to capitalize (or if you prefer, capitalise) it due to its function as a proper noun, it is also not strictly necessary. Similarly, the Arabic bin, seen frequently in the names of practitioners of Islam, means "son of." Standard practice is to not capitalize this word, hence: Osama bin Laden.

In conclusion I would like to thank you for one of the most well-composed, interesting private messages it has ever been my privilege to receive on this site. Moderation is by and large a thankless, boring task punctuated by the mewling of self-righteous idiots with no concept of proper communication. It is nice to have this monotony interrupted on occasion by self-righteous persons who are not in fact idiots.

Best regards,
bartolimu

P.S.: If you would prefer to limit your browsing to sites not hosted in the United States, for which you seem to hold a certain distaste, I would commend to you the Firefox add-on Flagfox. It displays the flag of whichever country corresponds to the IP number of the site you are browsing, and can be easily configured to display this flag in one of several easily-spotted locations within your browser window.

P.P.S.: While the term "home run" does indeed come from the sport of baseball, which is most frequently associated with the United States, the earliest records of such a game come from England. Thus it could be argued either way whether a home run - indeed a heroic feat - is more a product of American or British innovation. That, however, is a discussion best left to another day.

Originally Posted by cazerus

Dear Bartolimu,
Thank you so much for pointing out the errors in my first post to EJ. Please note that I have capitalised your name, I hope that is not a further infraction but merely an effort to “obey basic rules of capitalization…” which is of course spelt in the American way, as I presume your site is run and probably hosted be a stateside server and American moderator.
I am guilty as charged on all counts that is because I did not actually read the rules, I just ticked the box.
So I wholeheartedly apologise for having caused you and the other users of your forums any distress at having to read my “home run of awfulness with this one post” again I am assuming a home run is an Americanism, meaning some kind of heroic feat.
Whilst I now fully appreciate the title of the hosting site far more than I did before posting and have spent many hours reading the posts to gain a much fuller understanding of the warlock class and how to play it, I always believed that the internet was an informal arena of communication and therefore have always used it as such.
I would just like to suggest that you need to change the name of your website from Elitist Jerks to something more appropriate, whilst EJ seems to fit with the ethos of the posts, the site should be renamed appropriately to express the condescending, dictatorial attitude of the moderation, well this one in particular. Perhaps you should change your user name to Osama Bin Laden so the casual internet browser will realise that an infraction of the rules may result in a Sharia law type of response where one may have there hands cut off for daring to not follow your rules,
Whist I realise that this reply will automatically have me removed from the site membership list, I am relieved somewhat to be able to say I faced Bin Laden and got out alive,
Regards
Cazerus