User blog:SuperTalker101/Online Chatting - Beware

Blog: SuperTalker101

One of the most important things that you must remember when chatting online is that there is always a history of the actions that you have committed; whether they be good or bad. In most cases, people tend to forget about the good ones and remind you of the bad ones to smear your reputation and make themselves look as if they follow the rules.

Perhaps the most important is the fact that whenever you make a comment, it's almost impossible to determine whether it was a joke, sarcastic or downright serious. Punctuation has made that problem less difficult to understand, but many people do not exercise it properly, and thus many comments are left with a different atmosphere as they were meant for. For example, my colleague and I once did a petition to save the Oak Ridges Moraine, a threatened water supply in Canada. The ORM is very important to Canadians, specifically those living in the Eastern region (the majority), and if not saved, millions of Canadians could be impacted in a harmful way. My colleague made the comment "sign this petition or else you will die a horrible death" on our petition page, and completely ruined and invalidated the entire petition. At first, I actually thought that he wanted to kill people if they did not sign the petition, but closer investigation told me that he meant to say 'Sign this petition or else you will die because you will drink poisoned and polluted water". Who would have thought?



I recently noticed the fact that many users on the Big Nate COMMENTS Wiki don't practice proper punctuation, and I have a problem with that. This is because a user named Vxnillabean posted a comment which was supposedly meant to be a joke, but it sounded like a downright threat. His comment -->

At first glance, any one person would have believed that it was a threat. After all, his comment, specifically the last part, "AND NO ONE GETS HURT" is a common characteristic in threats. They list their needs, and then they list the consequences of not meeting the needs. In response to this, I commented: "Go to hell". This received attention all over the BNCS, and I was criticized for it. But what most infuriated me was the fact that an admin (ToPhu31) had decided to issue a warning for my comment instead of his comment.

Later, I gave an Administrative Complaint to Positive Elixir Trade (PET, current bureaucrat) about how this was a serious issue, however, I have yet to hear from him. This raises the question; is there no limit as to how recreationally and leisurely an administrator can give a warning? or whether there should be guidelines regarding proper grammar?

It's an issue that the famous user on GoComics, CarsonYT, has argued for centuries. Although his arguments didn't concern this field specifically, I believe that there should be restrictions on grammar to prevent future misconceptions like this.

This little incident has caused a lot of mishaps and changes in my reputation. I do recognize the problem on my part, but I believe that my little mistake has opened the door to a bigger problem.