X-posting

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I was admonished once by a mod for crossposting a message from an open thread(unlocked) to another. The thing is, I looked at the official rules list and I did Not see ANYTHING that explicitly stated that crossposting from one open thread to another is prohibited! I'd like Alex's input on this since I presume he authored the rules list.

In that case Im confused on exactly what is meant by cross-posting. If it means starting multiple identical threads than I rest my case since I assumed such would not be ok. But if I copy-n-paste a message from one thread to another WITHOUT starting an entirely new thread, is That crossposting??? Im confoozed.....

I know what you mean, it is confusing.

Intent is everything. Well, it's not everything, but it's a lot. If you take something someone said from one discussion and bring it to another because they aren't arguing with you to your satisfaction, that would be a definite no-no. So if I see unrelated quotes, I'm going to ask myself, "What's this guy tryin' to do here?" If I feel like he's tryin' to provoke, belittle, create or promote conflict or drama, I'm gonna have a problem with that.

On another board the rule is, "Address the issue, not the member." Seems to me that there's never a need to say, "But in this other thread over here, you said...!"

So.. if something you say in one thread is also applicable in another... you can't repeat it? :huh:

I'm kind of curious about this myself, it seems kind of arbitrary. For example, just recently I saw a member chiding another about personal attacks and stating that he doesn't make them, when I had literally just seen several personal attacks posted by the same member in other threads. Would it be considered a rule violation to cross post the earlier attacks in order to point out this hypocrisy? In a similar vein, I often debate the same people on the same subject when it comes up in the news, and some of these people directly contradict themselves from thread to thread on the same topic. I don't see how confronting them with their earlier argument is in anyway intended to harass or belittle, but can apparantly be technically considered a rules violation. I would think that harassing or belittling posts would be pretty self evident in and of themselves, and thus the rule against cross posting is both redundant and unnecessary.

So is cross-posting just repeating the same things? or what???

Last edited by ShadesOfMe on 08 Dec 2008, 7:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

People frequently come to conclusions and I have no idea how they got there.

I've repeated myself, my own words, hundreds of times. These are my positions, my opinions. I've quoted Alex from the rules thread.

Of course, if you just post the same thing over and over again, that constitutes spamming.

Oh wow. I'm confused. To start, what exactly is the definition of cross-posting?

Yes.

So?

I don't make the rules, I just try to act in the best interest of the community as a whole.

^I think you just did it.

I'm getting to you.

I dunno. Maybe someone would be kind enough to look it up for us.

As autistics, we'd all like a simple, black & white interpretation of the rules. It would certainly make my job easier, but that's not what's best for the community as a whole, just some individuals. I think of Moderators as "Member Retaintion Specialists." Our job is to help people understand what they need to do/ not do in order to retain their posting privileges, and not find themselves in "Read Only" mode. We try to work with people who seem to be posting in good faith. It would be nice if people accepted moderator intervention in that spirit.

Remember, if you are unhappy with a moderator's decision, you can always appeal to another moderator to have the decision reviewed.

I guessing the mod that admonished the OP wasn't you then, since you don't know what it is either. Maybe that mod can explain it to us.

Isn't crossposting to make an exact duplicate of one post in two or more different threads? making a point related to the subject of the thread quoting a member from another thread, would not qualify as crossposting I presume, just in case.

Anyway, I suppose the reason for the rule could be to avoid wasting space ?

Why? The intent is not to belittle, provoke drama, or spam, but merely part of an arguing technique. By your logic, posting quotes from outside WP, such as news articles or politicians, should be banned if the intent is to undermine someone else's position, otherwise known as debate or arguing.




So, as part of a reasonable discussion, bringing up someone's past positions on the matter is pretty standard, I mean I could paraphrase someone to get around this arbitrary rule, but that would just be stupid. Also, would cross posting myself be considered a violation? As said, I often argue the same topics with the same or different people depending upon what is in the news, and many times I've already answered an identical argument in an earlier post.




So you don't ever consider the wisdom of the rules themselves, you just blindly enforce what is written? Didn't you just say that this one is all about intent, which would require a certain amount of moderator discretion to determine? Now, I'm not going to come right out and say that these kinds of arbitrary, fuzzy rules are there just so moderators can selectively enforce them against people who they simply don't like, but I can see how someone else might draw that conclusion.

No, that's not what you asked about. You asked about raising someone's contradictory position to point out thier hypocracy to attempt to illuminate their flaws, to bring them down.

Address the issue, not the member.

I do this by stating my position, then I decline to argue. Argument implies a desire to win. I only need to state my position.