caketastydelish v. bootstoots

[illram]

Caketastydelish is appealing the following infraction:

Dear caketastydelish,

You have received an infraction at Civilization Fanatics' Forums.

Reason: (Major) Trolling
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Trolling in an RD thread. Don't post "questions" like this.
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This infraction is worth 3 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

Original Post:
[post]14220669[/post]

Do you think it's a good idea to go to an airport, screaming "allah ackbar" while wearing a "death to America" t-shirt?

If you wish to appeal this infraction, please follow the process outlined in this post

All the best,
Civilization Fanatics' Forums

I PMed Illram and requested an appeal. It's april the first...

Just because it's April Fools Day doesn't mean you get to troll the Ask A Muslim thread with something like this. I might be lenient if it were a clever hoax or something, but this is just offensive and not funny at all.

As you can see, this was his response when I let him know I PMed you for an appeal. His response seems to stiffly be "you clearly deserved the infraction, period."

Which he's entitled to think that, I suppose, only I contest it. I think:

a) it was april fool's

b) I'm known for making jokes like that

c) the joke wasn't that bad

d) I'm middle eastern and have muslims in my very family. There are certain anti-muslim posters on CFC (whom I won't name but you know who they are) but I have no such pattern with my posting history. Obviously it was just a harmless joke.

All relevant PMs are above. As you can see, Cake's appeal is based on his assertion that this was made on April Fools, he is known for making jokes like that, it wasn't that bad, and he is middle eastern.

My take: first of all this is an RD thread about Islam, so a higher standard applies. Under that standard, even if we accept as true everything Cake said, this is non-substantive spam warranting points.

However I don't think any of Cake's points have merit anyway and a trolling infraction (if not a ban) is warranted under our rules for RD posts.
(a) April fool's day is not a license to troll or make offensive posts, the forum's rules apply 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and I fail to see how this is any sort of "prank" or anything remotely close to an April Fool's jest;
(b) a poster's history of trolling only means the poster is more likely deserving of infraction, not less (and Cake does have an infraction history);
(c) I see zero humor in the "joke," it is in incredibly poor taste at best; and finally,
(d) being middle eastern is not license to troll middle easterners.

So, I would vote to uphold.

edit: Cake wanted to add two additional PM's to the record here:

One more thing I wanted to add was the context of the joke (which I already explained) is very important. Since I am one of the posters who defends Islam and doesn't troll any religion (I do have a number of infractions but very few of their are to due posts that have to do with religion), it should easily be recognized within OT regulars that I meant no offense to the joke.

To the contrary, back in 2008 (I think that was the year) I made some silly Coldplay/Joe Satriana thread about a copyright issue and several posters trolled me for years, bringing up Coldplay in every single thread I made in a long time, and 99 percent of them didn't get an Infraction.

Similarly, a few years ago, I made a thread on age gap relationships and several of those very same posters trolled me again everywhere I went. It's finally died down and they haven't done it recently, although it went on for a while.

The point is: If I get an infraction for "trolling Islam" when clearly anyone who even remotely knows me (even just here on the civfanatics website) knows I hold nothing against Islam. But people who genuinely do hate me (or at least, dislike me) troll threads, hijacking the topic altogether just to bring up something I said several years ago (as has happened several times with both of the examples of) this seems wrong.

Here's another point:

In the "ask an evangelical Christian" thread (while it was still up) people asked all kinds of silly/stupid/absurd questions, including me. One of which that I can remember off the top of my head was "would you be offended if they made a movie where the ghostbusters caught the holy ghost"

And one poster with a pirate flag for his avatar who is an OT regular, made comments 10 times worse than that (and *lots* of them) and didn't get infracted for any of it as far as I remember.

They even re-opened ask a theologian as a red diamond thread the very last time, and it still got trolled time and time again, with nobody infracting it.

Several posters on the site make fun of Christians (or religion in general) on a regular basis and it's obvious that they truly do despise Christians/reliigons, both in their online personas and probably in person. They same cannot be said for me. Yet I get infracted for my joke about what would essentially be a chapels show skit or some reality tv mtv jackass stunt thing, and people who *genuinely* mean offense (such as in the threads I described) didn't get anything.

and

One last thing I wanted to add was that regarding the ask a evangelical thread:

It's not a matter of "if others can break the rules, I can to" so much as I genuinely didn't know it was against the rules to begin with. Lots of people made insulting questions to Christians in the ask a evangelical thread.

To a lesser degree (and more along the lines of what I actually did in the muslim thread) lots of people made lots of light-hearted joke questions in plontinus's "ask a theologian". He didn't take offense, as far as I know- especially because no infractions were issued for all those joke questions.

I understand that religion/philosophy/death/life can be a touchy subject for many people, so moderation can be particularly enforced for it. However, I feel there should be a clear cut line drawn between what is and isn't acceptable, since on the one hand it seems lots of religious jokes (or in some cases heated serious criticism of a particular religion) are allowed, and in some cases they aren't. Again, in my case it wasn't a criticsm or overgeneralization of Islam, because it was a joke. Although even if it were serious it's hardly any worse than some of the serious posts people have made about Islam (Funky has said countless things. On one example he said something more or less along the lines of "when Muslmis reach two percent of a coutries population or more, they start causing lots of problems and demand helal meat".

Again, I know I've received a fair few infractions, but the vast majority of them had nothing to do with religion. It's also worth noting that a solid majority of them were from quite some time ago and my record has been cleaner as I've gotten older and mellowed out. I'll also promise to not make any sort of religious jokes again, even though I feel there isn't a clear line- just to be safe. I have received many infractions over the years (member of civfanatics since 2008) , and this is literally the first time I'm ever appealing an infraction.


With all of these things said, I feel it is only fair to reverse Bootsroots decision, as well-intentioned as he was probably being.

 

[ori]

falls squarely into the realm of the "don't be a jerk" rule and should be grounds for a short term ban, points are a lenient way of dealing with it.

I would uphold, though only because we don't do increasing penalties on appeal.

 

[Camikaze]

Did he complete his discussion with Bootstoots before the appeal was commenced?

 

[illram]

Yes. 5 char

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

So part of his defence is that he's known for this type of post? He sure is. Uphold.

 

[leif erikson]

However I don't think any of Cake's points have merit anyway and a trolling infraction (if not a ban) is warranted under our rules for RD posts.
(a) April fool's day is not a license to troll or make offensive posts, the forum's rules apply 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and I fail to see how this is any sort of "prank" or anything remotely close to an April Fool's jest;
(b) a poster's history of trolling only means the poster is more likely deserving of infraction, not less (and Cake does have an infraction history);
(c) I see zero humor in the "joke," it is in incredibly poor taste at best; and finally,
(d) being middle eastern is not license to troll middle easterners.

So, I would vote to uphold.

Agree with all of this.

Vote to uphold.

 

[Browd]

I concur.

 

[Camikaze]

Yes. 5 char

In that case, I'd vote to uphold.