What does 'wat' stands for?

Oh, as a side note, I'd like to bar the word "awesmoe" from our forum vocabulary.  People are spelling it wrong on purpose, and it's annoying to look at.

[darthvader]NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO![/darthvader]

I think that makes sense, thanks for explaining since some forumers were obviously a bit confused.

If you don't want people making one-word posts, add a rule against it.  It's a common rule and nobody would complain. 

If you don't want people making one-word posts, add a rule against it.  It's a common rule and nobody would complain.

That wouldn't be the way to go about doing this, though.  It would be complicated because there's too many situations where a one-word post would be legitimate and would have a lot of thought go into it.    The issue we're trying to fight here is when little thought is put into a post.  But not all one-word posts are pointless, and not all pointless posts are one word.


It seems then that an appropriate rule would be something like "if you don't have anything to add, don't say anything."  But that's more of a guideline than an enforceable rule; don't make inane posts.

I can't think of any good rule.

Actually, this reminds me of a forum I visited before... I think it was Pseudolonewolf's forum.  Anyways, whatever forum it was, it had quite an interesting set of rules, and there was community moderation.  A post could be downrated for being too short, too long, sounding too stupid, being too confusing, having bad grammar, having no point, or several other bad qualities (and then a banner would appear on the post like "Points were deducted for: Brevity")... Posts could also be rewarded for good qualities, too.  It was nice that there was a forum where your user rating reflected the quality of your posts...

But I wouldn't like to see rules like that anywhere else, because they definitely had harsh criteria and they were very subjective.  Even though all the rules were consistent with my regular writing style and I had no trouble following them, I was in constant fear of being downrated.
(edit: Yup, it was Pseudolonewolf's forum.  It's called Fig Hunter, and here are the rules.  Scroll down to "Violations" to see what I'm talking about)


I do think that posts with little thought put into them should be discouraged, but I think that any rule disallowing them (or anything of the sort) would be too harsh.

Question: what would we GAIN from banning the word "wat" from the Nifflesian language?
EDIT: And another thing...[/h2g2reference](From Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spam )

E-Mails or posts on message boards that were either pointlessly made by an annoying person, or made to annoy that were made by an annoying person. Or a link to a computer virus.

Pointless is the key word there. "Wat" has a meaning. If someone says "Yo dawg i herd u liek cars so i put a car in yo car so you can drive while you drive" and I reply with "wat", that person will say, "Oh, sorry. I mean, I can put a smaller car within your other car. Thus, you can drive your smaller car inside your bigger car while driving your bigger car." If someone repeatedly posts "wat" as the reply to everything in a thread, that's spam, yes. If it's like the latter, then, no, it's not.

When you put some time into making a post, it can always happen that someone is not understanding what you say. This is normal. When someone then just says:

Quote

wat

I find this very disrespectful as the wat poster didn't took time to make such post. When I see this, I think: if the wat poster did not took the time to write that post, the wat poster probably didn't even took the time to read the original post and thus doesn't understand it in the first place. Next to that, a wat post is wasting forumspace which I think is just an act of being careless. Someone that is not caring, is imho not respecting others which is disrespectful.

I hope this is making sense. If not, please just tell me what you don't understand. I will for obvious reasons ignore a wat post.

This is just saying that posts with little-to-no content are disrespectful, rather than that the word "wat" is disrespectful specifically.

Maybe 'wat' has its use, but it can definitely be disrespectful in some cases, like when it's used as a reply to a non-native English speaker's post.

I can't speak for others, but as a non-native English user, I put a conscious effort into making every post of mine clear and understandable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So I don't mind clarifying it if someone doesn't understand what I wrote and let me know that with respect, like "What did you mean by that?" or even just "What was that?".

But if I got only a single 'wat', 'lolwut', 'wtf' or some weird googled pic as a reply, it looks like a mockery of my efforts and that's not very nice. 

My point exactly.

I really don't find this funny! REALLY!

Hey, chill dude. Stop being so ridicolous.

Hey, chill dude. Stop being so ridicolous.

If I wasn't offended by this, I wouldn't have made it into such a big deal in the first place.

I mean that it's ridicolous to be offended by something like that.

I mean that it's ridicolous to be offended by something like that.

I agree. Like you wouldn't be offended if someone would say "what?" but then "wat" Oh that is so bad it's is so offending and people that say it is stupid. If you don't like internet then leave.

I agree. Like you wouldn't be offended if someone would say "what?" but then "wat" Oh that is so bad it's is so offending and people that say it is stupid. If you don't like internet then leave.

If someone made an entire post that only said "What?" and used posts like that just like the posts we've been complaining about, I'd be annoyed at it too.

Hey, chill dude. Stop being so ridicolous.

Hey, you're the one who put a random post saying "wat" in a thread that's against it. Don't go poking the bears and then complain the warning sign wasn't big enough.

I would also be offended by a single "what?" post, but less offended as just wat without even a ?.