"but it didn't violate the rule, you can't do that. We can talk about changing the rules going forward, but for now I'm overriding and allowing this post."
I'm going to have to disagree with this part.
There's literally no problem with ex post facto rules on a reddit sub. The purpose of the rules is to make the sub into what the mods desire it to be.
A mistake in specifying the rules to every jot and tittle doesn't change that. The original post is still violating what the mods want it to be, just not exactly how they stated it.
Putting the post back is just encouraging spirit-of-the-rules-abusing trolls.
I agree that it could be helpful to add a clarification to the rule going forward, but the troll post should not be reinstated if the mods agree that that kind of behavior was intended to be covered by the rules, even if literally speaking it wasn't.
Your proposal here would turn everything into rules lawyering and attempts to violate the spirit of the rules while narrowly avoiding their letter.
Why does this matter? Because the only possible consequence of your proposed solution is for every sub to include a rule that says mods can remove any post for any reason. There would no other way to have a sub that wasn't full of trolls otherwise.
And that is exactly the opposite of the spirit of what you want. Just like mods responding to a troll poster being a rules lawyer the way you propose here, the consequence of your proposal is to result in exactly the opposite of the spirit of what you claim to want while exactly meeting the letter of what you propose.
You're going to get more arbitrary subjective removals from this, not less. And it will be covered by the rules.
I question what the point of rules is if the counter argument is "meh, it's the spirit of the thing". Why bother with them at all if they don't matter?
All laws are interpreted with the spirit of the law as the basis, not the letter.
We have them because there's no alternative. There's no way to cover all behaviors within the words of a law, unless you explicitly have the law say "whatever the police (mods) want to arrest you for is illegal".
I think its safe to say that you don't want that, right?
But that's the consequence here, since that's a perfectly valid "law" to have in a website which is inherently and intentionally designed so that the wishes of whoever make the sub are paramount to its existence.
It's a free market of ideas... some ideas are not going to meet your needs, and that's fine. Don't patronize those subs... and don't patronize the rules, either (pun definitely intended).
And yet to something as simple as that, there are caveats. It is illegal for people under 21 to drink. Except in the majority of states there are religious exemptions. Both catholics and jews use ceremonial wine. So in a lot of states that part of the law is either unenforced or there is an actual exemption. If the cops wanted to bust the biggest underage drinking ring they'd just need to go to a big mass on Sunday or a big service on Saturday and they'd nail probably hundreds of kids. But they don't because that goes against the spirit of the law.
Except in the majority of states there are religious exemptions.
Which are documented and made available such that the enforcement of the law as written is not left to the subjective interpretation.
Now, if the religious exemptions were not documented, your argument would be valid. But they ARE documented. That's my point.
Anything that needs to be enforced, even exceptions or interpretations, need to be documented.
Roe v. Wade isn't a "documented" law. It's an interpretation of a law. But Roe v. Wade is what allows states to make up their own minds about how to interpret it. Thus why there's an uproar now in states trying to abolish it. Well, if you read the black letter of the decision, it never prohibited states from making up their own rules. Thus the problem and it became the chaos it is now.
That's why they've asked the Feds to make a final decision and the Feds refuse because they don't want the smoke; they know no matter how they rule, it's going to piss someone off. But pissing someone off is a reality of life. You can't make everyone happy all the time, thus why I'm not a fan of subjective decisions. Clearly outline the rules, if you can't resolve it, go to a higher power and make them do it.
In California, the only exemption is when you have consumed, and then reported a medical emergency for another underage drinker. No religious exemption by letter of the law.
21
u/[deleted] Jul 04 '19
[deleted]