Axx°N N. wrote:Yes, but aren't those naturally posters that would reach out to you? Having an issue with posters is kind of a one-way-street solution. But if a user is being driven away by mod hostility, I'd imagine they would just silently dip out or write the community off; too much trouble. There would be fear of retaliation if they did otherwise, or even just a self-defeating sense of pointlessness. A community is its mods. I mean, I didn't want to post this because I was worried I'd get banned.
I don't believe I quite understand what you mean with the first sentence in particular; could you clarify?
As for the rest - I realize the argument you are making, and do not question the validity of the sentiment. However, for the specific context of this forum, I believe it does not apply to that absolute extent; not merely the (admittedly in large parts subjective) quality if analysis has dropped since Reichu in particular left, but also the much more measurable quantity; the amount of proposals of new ideas, of any sort of theorycrafting has drastically decreased since then, and most of the currently talked about things are merely treading old ground; since I fundamentally agree with Reichu's vision for this forum as a place where new ideas are born, I consider this a major cause for concern and a problem that needs to be rectified; I am fully aware that this sometimes results in stepping on people's toes, but my own conviction (and that of the rest of the active mod team - we do coordinate in advance how we handle things) is that enforcing this standard of debate in some fashion is worth the price of stepping on the toes of those who do not wish to engage in this was.
For the final point: You, nor anyone else, will never face repercussions for voicing concerns so long as you come from a place of genuine concern for the wellbeing of the forum. This is a matter that I will not budge on so long as I hold any semblance of authority.
Several users disagreed with your definition--so did the dictionary--but your argument is basically that only yours is correct. I don't think your idea of how the term should be used (let's say, "originalist") inherently lends itself better to an analytical context.
I did not mean to imply that my interpretation is the only correct one; there are several steps down the ladder that I also view as valid stances to take, even if I don't fully agree with them, and I took such care in illustrating the other extreme in hopes of spurring people on to find such a definiton of their own; the issue was that this did not happen and those two extremes remained the only points considered.
It's worth noting, though, that within their original comments they linked to production interviews that put a fair amount of doubt on the OP's theory. If we're supposed to have an academic standard, weighing theories against production realities should be a worthwhile endeavor. It's pretty plainly on the record that Mari was incorporated in a "figure it out as we go" approach. That doesn't mean meaning can't be added retroactively, but it should be considered when the OP is making the claim that certain creative decisions were made because of reasons they're attributing just so their theory bears out.
For the record, I also do not agree with OP's theory; I did not respond to in proper because I could not find the words to a proper writeup to why I disagree
Claiming that someone using the term Mary Sue is doing so because of sexism is a pretty big one. It's just not a fair accusation at all, and it ignores basically every point they had substantiated previously. It just makes it seem like you weren't considering their opinions at face value, and that tone continued.
That was not the intention of that line at all, and I thought I had taken proper care in my wording to differentiate it from said accusation; evidently I did not.
My intention in that particular instance was to illustrate why I do not consider the current dictionary definiton of the term a particularily valid one through the example of one of the driving forces in that shift coming from a rather malicious standpoint; by no means was I trying to infer that anyone in the discussion shared that standpoint, and I apologize if that is the way that this line came off.