- Da Muffin Man
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- Exalted Legendary Member
No, ExcessiveFaun6 is not my real gamertag.
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Cortana: The message just repeats. "Regret, Regret, Regret."
Miranda: Any idea what it means?
Sgt. Johnson: Dear Humanity... we regret being alien bastards. We regret coming to Earth. And we most definitely regret that the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!
Marines: Hoo-rah!
Posted by: Da Muffin Man
I'm just going to weigh in on this with what might be a clarifying and more delineating post.
Firstly, I want to point out that one of the greatest rhetorical fallacies in the realm of communication of thought is that of argumentum ad hominem, or an attempt to negate or weaken an opponent's argument by attacking certain characteristics or unrelated beliefs of the person supporting it. This is a rhetorical fallacy very close at heart to this thread, but I believe it also represents the dividing line in settling (or perhaps clarifying) this issue.
I believe that if a thread is created with the intention of being stupid, or is so blatantly devoid of premeditation so as to be entirely incoherent, the best and only course of action is to ignore it. To attack the substance of the thread by calling the OP an idiot and using big vocabulary words to insult his intelligence - however justified - is both pedantic and a textbook example of ad hominem.
The exception to this rule I believe only applies in situations where the OP is new to the forums; a firm yet relenting tone can go a long way if you catch a new poster who is violating quite a few of the forum rules at once, such as proposing a feature for Halo 4 in the Community forum. You are not attacking his argument by insulting him, but rather making a lasting impression on this very impressionable new member, and if done with tact, it can be a boon to the health of the forum.
Note that I use the phrase "firm yet relenting"; this is key. I think that a lot of the sample responses Helvek gave in the OP were much too harsh. But I think a little less than buddy-buddy tone can be helpful when correcting naive, yet sweepingly violate posts.
Sorry to self-quote, but I want to clarify and my post is a page ago. Overall I disagree with attacking somebody to deter future idiocy. I think that the sheer disappointment of creating a thread with 0 replies (we all know the feeling), is more than enough to make a person reevaluate their posting style and improve it. This just requires people to actually ignore these idiotic posts. However, as Foman pointed out:
Posted by: x Foman123 x
I honestly cannot think of a community that does a worse job at ignoring trolling and anything else it sees as a "bad" thread than we do, and it's shameful. Please do not encourage this kind of behavior by suggesting obnoxious responses to any thread.