There was a filter at People's Forum, and glancing through a couple of LJs of friends, it was clear it was being used and why. When we came back over here, I noticed a few people bemoaning not having the filter.

Yes, all backchannel, but illustrative of the feeling. Zoe has never struck me as anything but harmlessly clueless. She doesn't bother me at all, and if she gets a bit obscure I shrug and move on. I have never understood the depths of dislike she inspires. Yes, I read all the boards.

I don't think asking about punctuation is any more out of line than asking posters not to use "2 c001 4 sp3111ng" conventions for posting, which I have also seen people do.

I see Victor's pattern, except that I don't think step 2 is usually people cutting Zoe down quite rudely; I think it is usually people cutting her down with at least surface politeness. Sometimes this seems to me to be real politeness, and sometimes ... not.

[Edited because a sentence didn't make sense there. Sorry.]

I see Victor's pattern, except that I think people don't think step 2 is usually people cutting Zoe down quite rudely; I think it is usually people cutting her down with at least surface politeness. Sometimes this seems to me to be real politeness, and sometimes ... not.

I think it started as genuine politeness, but where we are running into problems is that, as many times as one may state DNFTEC, well, sometimes, even the sanest and most rational people fail to abide by that rule of thumb. So people are getting less and less polite about it, which is usually a sign that you are dealing with something that's An Issue.

This is sort of a broad question for me: at what point do we stop tolerating rudeness?

Yeah, and I don't know. I mean, when a person is called on stuff that really isn't that big a deal, but they continue to do it? I don't know.

You know what? If she annoys you, ignore her. But I think more than one person on this board has hit harder than she's given.

I totally agree with this. Frankly, I don't understand why Zoe is even still here, because a number of people have been really rude to her since day one. But, she apparently wants to stay. I have seen posts from her that seemed Warning-worthy, but never til later, I just don't necessarily think this latest thing is.

I think it is usually people cutting her down with at least surface politeness. Sometimes this seems to me to be real politeness, and sometimes ... not.

To put it bluntly, the word that occurred to me was not "politeness" but "set-up".

Yes, I'm annoyed. But this didn't have to become something officially recognized, it could have stayed backchannel. Now that it's open for comment, though, I'm gonna comment.

And for a while, I think Step 2 was civil. It was after repeated attempts to engage in any sort of conversation, and being met with incomprehensibility or outright rudeness, that people got frustrated and snappy.

I wish Zoe would come over here, and participate, since she's clearly reading the boards right now. But we can't make her do that, can we?

Connie, it's not the non-sequiturs that tends to get in my hair; it's the intentional rudeness. There was an exchange that got me to the point of all caps in Unamerican a few weeks ago, whereby she dismissed Betsy's knowledge of British history out of hand (i.e. inserted herself into an ongoing conversation), and then, when offered citations, called Betsy "granny" and got snotty.

Obviously, I didn't bring it to Bureaucracy and/or stompy feet, because I could tell I was losing my temper and because I wasn't sure that we all were ready to handle Stompy Foot Warning Mark II. But it keeps coming up, you know? If it didn't keep coming up, we wouldn't have found ourselves talking openly/publically about it.

I lost a post but it turns out that it would have been a massive cross-post anyway.

Basically, the collective fuse is getting shorter. MARCIE would solve this issue. HostRocket sucks.

I think that sums everything up.

I think the disconnect I'm seeing is that people don't seem to consider their responses to Zoe as rude. I'm afraid I feel differently.

It was after repeated attempts to engage in any sort of conversation, and being met with incomprehensibility or outright rudeness, that people got frustrated and snappy.

I dunno. I remember a post from Allyson asking Zoe if she'd suffered a brain injury that was worse, on my personal rudeness scale, than anything Zoe had said to that point. (I thought 'Gay sex is ICKY!' was a dumb thing to say and a viewpoint not normally expressed beyond your more backward 10th grades, but I don't think Zoe was making the connection between her personal reaction to slash fiction and RL gay relationships. Which is to say, it was stupid, but not intentionally cruel. )

To be honest, Zoe's refusal to apologize when caled on stuff bothers me more than anything else -- and makes me wonder if she's playing us.