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Sorry to be uncivil but I’m not sure why you’re posting here and what the point of this is. Since it’s possible you’re just a troll, I won’t bother to respond any further and with any luck your whole piece will be taken down. I left the original title untouched but deleted the original post and all of the comments except that last one. Just a couple of points for anyone who might be lurking:
1) We do not allow posts that are directed toward those outside this forum.
2) We do not allow posts that are, essentially, nothing but negative rants against apostles or Prophets – or the LDS Church in general. We discuss difficult topics, and we rant sometimes, but we just don’t do “nothing but rants”.
3) We do not allow posts that appear to be little more than an attempt to promote someone’s own blog – or book – or cause – or any other narrowly defined act of self-promotion. I link to things I’ve written on my personal blog quite often, but it always is in context of an existing discussion.
4) We do not allow posts that call for the LDS Church to be more restrictive than it already is, generally speaking.
5) We ABSOLUTELY do not allow posts that are geared toward encouraging greater disdain, disgust, discrimination, antipathy, hatred, revulsion, etc. of our brothers and sisters here on earth.
This post violated all of the policies I just listed, and I didn’t delete it entirely simply because I wanted to make those points explicitly and clearly.
Then this may be a good opportunity to ask. What is a Troll? Roy wrote:Then this may be a good opportunity to ask. What is a Troll?
I think a troll is someone who posts just to cause trouble but not foster a reasonable discussion and who also happens to live under a bridge.
Yes, there is a difference between a debate with differing opinions…and a troll just stirring up emotions. Don’t feed the trolls!!
:silent: Good call on that one. :clap: Definitely a troll. I clicked on his links… wow, just plain offensive on so many levels.
:crazy: Roy wrote:Then this may be a good opportunity to ask. What is a Troll?
In some forums they will call anyone that disagrees with the prevailing opinion of the majority of the bloggers that post there a troll and try to censor or ban them because they can’t stand to hear any arguments that are unpopular to the specific group they cater to. However, I would only consider someone a real troll if it looks like they know better than to say some of the things they do but they just don’t care because they are basically messing around. So the worst trolls will intentionally say some of the most idiotic, offensive, or obnoxious things they can think of for no other reason than because they want to irritate people.
Some trolls will also pretend to be what they are not because they apparently get a kick out of people taking what they say seriously as if they are for real. When called out about what they are doing wrong rather than being more careful about what they say trolls will typically continue to act the same way or even worse than before. I don’t remember what exactly was in the original post but even if the person that wrote it sincerely believed what he was saying I still don’t have a problem with it being deleted because it seemed rather extreme and inappropriate to post here. There are other sites where it would be easier to get away with saying things like that if that’s what you want to do.
I’m not comfortable calling the person who wrote the post a troll– at least, not at this point, since I believe he was sincere in what he wrote and wasn’t posting it just to stir things up and get everyone agitated. He actually reworked the original post he submitted (which we didn’t approve so we could explain about the site in a private message) to add more detail than just the links to his own blog – which was the content of his original attempt to post something here. In that light, he actually did make an attempt to “follow our instructions” and modify his post. However, at the most basic level, even after the modification, what he posted simply wasn’t appropriate for this forum – for the reasons I outlined above and, especially, for the last reason. We aren’t into divisiveness and disdain. It’s antitheitcal to the purpose of this site to scorn others and express revulsion at the idea of worshiping with them. The exact example in his post was being repulsed by a gay man passing the sacrament –
and there simply was absolutely no way we could have a constructive, positive, solution-focused conversation about the post and its content. We are dedicated to the concept that all of us are beloved sons and daughters of God, and, doctrinal issues notwithstanding, we should be more inclusive and less exclusive in our love for others and our willingness to worship with them. We need to be more Christlike, and the post and the links therein didn’t further the mission and purpose of this site. In fact, the ensuing conversation would have hurt us and our mission.
We could have had a jolly time ripping it apart – but that isn’t the purpose of this site, either. I didn’t want to leave a post intact that would have done nothing but bring out the venom and lead us down the path that too many sites like this take. I want this site to continue to be focused on love and support and understanding and mutual growth – and that can’t happen if we allow cancerous, divisive things to be posted among and attacked by us.
I did what I did for purely “spiritual” and “communal” reasons – and I think the ensuing conversation about those reasons is important to have now and then.Troll can mean a troublemaker, and stirrer. It can also mean someone you don’t agree with.
I should add that I recognize the fine line between what I did with this post and other “boundary maintanence” steps taken by different organizations. For example, I think it can be enlightening to discuss this situation in comparison to some things about “The Church” that bother some of us – and I believe it can help us be more charitable toward sincere efforts to set proper boundaries, even in cases where we disagree with the actual boundaries being set. As Sam just said, we need to be very careful here that we don’t reject and classify others simply because we disagree with them – but we also need to be aware of harmful things to our “community” that really do need to be rejected and eliminated. It’s the tension – the balancing act – the fine line that is important to try to maintain and always consider, since we become what we criticize the moment it stops being difficult to make those decisions and our actions become reflexive, defensive and strictly emotional. That’s why there is so little that gets moderated here – and even less that gets deleted, but it’s also why we need to be able to moderate and delete, even if it happens rarely.
There are SO many applications of that principle, and I hope we can use this situation to understand better what is a very important concept – particularly for those striving to move past Stages 3 and 4 and into Stage 5 and beyond.
Just wanted to add that I support the moderating decisions for this topic. We tried twice to make this work. But in the end, it wasn’t producing content and discussion we felt was in line with the mission of the site (for all the reasons Ray listed above). SamBee wrote:Troll can mean a troublemaker, and stirrer.
It can also mean someone you don’t agree with.
Don’t forget the living under the bridge part. That’s critical to the definition of a troll in online discussion forums.
😈 I’m so glad you did n’t let the links stand. When I had the chance to look at his page (it was filtered here at work) I was quite unimpressed and really quite sickened by the blog content. Good call guys. SilentDawning wrote:SamBee wrote:Troll can mean a troublemaker, and stirrer.
It can also mean someone you don’t agree with.
Don’t forget the living under the bridge part. That’s critical to the definition of a troll in online discussion forums.
😈 Actually I’m going to nitpick here. I thought that was where it came from as well, but there’s another origin.
Apparently trolling is a kind of fishing where you trail a lure behind your boat and wait for the fish to snap at it. That’s equally likely as an origin.
(And how did Monty Python manage to name junk mail?!)
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