Poe!

[Goosey]

I've always been bothered by this, and now I'm getting pretty fed up of it, though it wasn't until recently that I realised why it bothered me, so I couldn't really bring it up.

People, do not comment on quotes with the single word 'Poe' (and no, smartarse, the two words "obvious Poe" aren't any better). If you're not prepared to explain why you think it's a Poe, or provide evidence for your claim, then you're not contributing, and there's no reason for anyone to think you're doing anything other than trolling.

It's strange that we can identify every logical fallacy in the actual quotes, but don't go to mentioning the bare assertion fallacy in these comments.

Stop it.

[DarkfireTaimatsu]

Hear hear. I've never liked those comments. They just come off as boring and no-original-thought to me.

I never knew where to say it, though, so I'm glad someone else did first. =3

[devilschaplain2]

Yes, but you can't honestly demand any more from me, I'm too damn lazy to explain these things. In fact, from now on, I'm not even typing "Poe", I'm just going to type the letter "P" for short, so

[ausador]

Well I usually have said something like "I'm calling Poe on this one" or something along those lines the couple of times I strongly felt one was. If it is obvious to me that the post is a Poe then why should I have to explain myself? The only reason I would be doing so is becase of blatant content, the posters identity, or the source of the quote. If it is readily apparent to me it should be to others to, if it isn't then why bore them or ruin the fun for them by spelling out the reasons for my opinion?

Same applies to when I post "Obvious troll is obvious" which I have done several times and even "Obvious troll is ever so very, very, obvious" as I did once with one I could not quite believe had gotten approved. If I have to explain why to you then there is automatically no reason for me to do so.

[Goosey]

Jun 3, 2009 1:21:29 GMT -5 ausador said:

Well I usually have said something like "I'm calling Poe on this one" or something along those lines the couple of times I strongly felt one was. If it is obvious to me that the post is a Poe then why should I have to explain myself? The only reason I would be doing so is becase of blatant content, the posters identity, or the source of the quote. If it is readily apparent to me it should be to others to, if it isn't then why bore them or ruin the fun for them by spelling out the reasons for my opinion?

Same applies to when I post "Obvious troll is obvious" which I have done several times and even "Obvious troll is ever so very, very, obvious" as I did once with one I could not quite believe had gotten approved. If I have to explain why to you then there is automatically no reason for me to do so.

I really hope you realise how little sense that makes.

What do you mean "if it is readily apparent to me it should be to others"? That's refuted by the very definition of Poe's Law itself!

And I really don't think that explaining a call of Poe is going to be more boring than just calling Poe without explanation. That's some feat.

[ausador]

I really hope you realise how little sense that makes.

Nope, it makes perfect sense to me, but of course I wrote it so I am possibly biased in my opinion.

What do you mean "if it is readily apparent to me it should be to others"? That's refuted by the very definition of Poe's Law itself!

Exactly, Poes law says basically that you can never know for sure if it is satire or not. So I may see subjective reasons for calling Poe that are obvious to me but are not to another poster. Others who see what I do will not need an explanation, those that do not will probably not agree with my reasoning anyway.

And I really don't think that explaining a call of Poe is going to be more boring than just calling Poe without explanation. That's some feat.

Personnally I find the threads that turn into:

It's a poe the spelling is too good.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
How do you know he didn't use spellcheck?
But the punctuation is right too.
Yes but look at the random caps.
He did that on purpose.
No he didn't.
Yes he did.
continue ad nauseum...

To be about as boring as a thread could possibly be, I have seen it happen to threads on the main page and don't want to help perpetuate it. Hence I say "I'm calling Poe" and walk away.

EDIT: I should have re-emphasized that I believe I have only ever called Poe twice, I really have to very sure of my reasons. Otherwise your just mucking up the thread by calling it out, your liable to start something like my example above.

[kwenf]

Poe.

[m52nickerson]

Jun 3, 2009 6:19:22 GMT -5 kwenf said:

Poe.

+1 exalt just for being "that guy"!

[antichrist]

Well a lot of people seem to think Poe = Troll. I've seen SuperSport called a Poe. Now I have my suspicions that he's an incredibly talented troll, but he's definitely no Poe.

[Goosey]

ausador, I do see what you mean, now, and I'll agree that sometimes it is "just obvious", but most of the time it's not.

But your example sort of indicates my point. There are people who will call Poe just because the spelling's too good. Many fundies' spelling is horrendous, but there are fundies out there who can spell, and non-fundies aren't immune to spelling errors, so that would be a bad reason to call Poe. This doesn't just apply to spelling, but to everything else. Even a post which appears well-reasoned can, in some (rare ) cases, still be both fundie and a darndest thing.

On the opposite end of the scale, some people may naively call Poe because "no one can really be that stupid". Clearly they can or this site wouldn't exist.

So what I'm saying is that calling Poe without giving a reason makes it difficult if not impossible to distinguish between those that have a good reason and those that have a bad reason. Furthermore, if you give a good reason for calling Poe, you're encouraging others to call Poe for good reasons rather than for bad reasons.

You might have been quite right to call Poe when you did, but if you don't give reasons, that just makes other people think that it's alright to call Poe whenever they feel like it.

It's actually not quite so bad now as it used to be, but last year there was a time when it seemed like there was someone calling Poe on every damn quote that made it through PubAd. That got really tedious.

[antichrist]

The way I look at it is that the main page is open to the public. So we're going to end up with fundies, trolls, and every other kind of Interweb creature posting on there. So I take anything out there with a grain of salt. Now there's people who post out there regularly, that I recognize and respect, but for a just plain Poe comment, ignore and carry on.

[Goosey]

Jun 3, 2009 13:50:57 GMT -5 @antichrist said:

The way I look at it is that the main page is open to the public. So we're going to end up with fundies, trolls, and every other kind of Interweb creature posting on there. So I take anything out there with a grain of salt. Now there's people who post out there regularly, that I recognize and respect, but for a just plain Poe comment, ignore and carry on.

That's true.

To be honest, I'm not so averse to any individual comment that just plainly says "Poe". What I have a problem with is when it becomes endemic, as it has before. A single comment can be ignored, like you say. A multitude of them, not so much.

[Old Viking]

This is an issue? "Poe" is simply a fast indication of a person's reaction, not a judgment from Zeus. If it's wrong, no harm done. If it's right, no harm done. There's no call for an elaborate explanation. This reminds me of the one about the two psychologists who pass one another on the sidewalk. "Good morning," say the first. "Good morning," the second replies, thinking to himself: "I wonder what he meant by that."

[archaeopath]

Isn't the point of declaring Poe an abbreviation in itself? Wouldn't a long winded explanation ("I don't believe you are a genuinely fundamentalist person. I believe you are a parody of fundamentalist people, whose objective is to mimic fundamentalist discourse....") be more boring? Couldn't the same be said of explaining why you think someone's a Poe?

[Sigmaleph]

Not really. Saying 'Poe' might be an abbreviation for actually quoting Poe's law, and it gets the message ("This is a parody, not an actual fundamentalist") across fine, as long as the person reading knows what Poe means. However, I cannot guess why you consider something a Poe just by virtue of the fact that you called it one, unless it's obvious. So, since clearly at least some people have not noticed it is a parody (otherwise, it wouldn't have passed public admin), it is usually helpful to provide an explanation of why you are calling Poe. I'm all for shortening messages, as long as the message itself is not lost in the process.