Should able2know ban people for having untoward opinions?

You have to laugh.

Nice to see you, snood.

0 Replies

@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

ok, so we should call you coloured - cuz you're definitely not invisible

you're as much a colour as any other human I've met

Possibly more so.

0 Replies

@realjohnboy,

Thanks. If I get yelled at over this, I'll report back...haha

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Actually, in rare disagreement with you, High Seas is colorless. She's completely and utterly transparent.

0 Replies

It has been decades, Snood, since I was in the military. What, if any, are the accepted words used these days in military parlance?
I, in my last few days in VN (SHORT!) drove for my company commander, who was recovering from an injury. I sat in on a promotion interview (not participating, of course). The prospective SGT (squad leader responsible for 10 guys) was asked:
"How many black guys are there in your squad?" He fired back, "I don't know and I don't care."
"How many guys are married?" He replied "Three. And they have three kids."
That interchange has always stuck with me. I am not sure why.
I guess you would have to have been there.

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

I smiled at that story.

0 Replies

It occurs to me that the last two pages have been pretty ironic, given the title of the thread. I believe I will take some of my own advice for a while.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

Well at least the last few pages provide an iullustration of the endless folly that inexorably follows censorship in any form, as a mere laps in PC speech degenerates into endless grinding of mouse turds into ever smaller......

1 Reply

heh...cyclo, don't think for a minute that this little dust up rivaled the "conversation" that spawned it. I sat there thinking at one point - should I just put her on "ignore" and stop answering on this thread...? Really didn't amount to anything that big to me... I guess the "transparent comment" was unnecessary...but c'mon. Wink

It was pretty good. (snicker)

0 Replies

@Arella Mae,

Arella Mae, sweetie, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.

0 Replies

@High Seas,

Quote:

Quote:
...As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete
melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech
that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of WORDS chosen for
the sake of their meaning, and more and more of PHRASES tacked together
like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house...

How very ironic. You've chosen a quote that describes you to a T, High Seas.

0 Replies

@fbaezer,

fbaezer wrote:

Once upon a time there was an excess of moderators, because very little motivation was needed for them to participate, so the filter -as your example with good ol' Bernie shows- was too lax. Now there is objectively none. There should be.

One of the goals of our moderation policy is for moderators not to be big stick wielders. On many forums moderators are visible authoritarian figures and invariably these generate a lot of personality conflicts. But here we try to do things less abrasively and moderators do their jobs behind the scenes, but that doesn't mean there are no moderators here. There are moderators here and they remove posts and ban members (mostly spammers) daily.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.

1 Reply

@failures art,

failures art wrote:

A2K leadership might want to determine if they view personal harassment to be a separate entity from unpopular or offensive opinions and where that line was.

We do, and while the line may not be where OB wants this is not the genesis of his complaints (and the person he claims was harassed hasn't complained or asked for his advocacy). He started advocating that we ban members a long time ago simply on the basis of their opinions on certain sexual subjects.

Whether or not our harassment lines should be different is a distinct issue but we are willing to ban people based on egregious harassment and of all the lynch attempts in the last year nearly all were already banned.

This particular demand (to ban people for such things as misogynistic postings) is what I asked about because we do not censor merely on the basis of the opinion being distasteful, this is a very different issue from harassment (which isn't really what the demands are based on, just a recent pretext for them).

0 Replies

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

So what if you had some other flags besides thumbs up and down? What about an "off-topic" flag so that if a post received a certain number of OT marks, it would disappear? Maybe a no meaningful input flag? I think people use the thumbs down both to show disagreement and to show no meaningful input. If you separated that out, the no input entries could disapear if they got to many down votes. Of course, that is open to abuse and the system would require periodic auditing to ensure that some group wasn't trolling about killing opinions they disagreed with. I would like a way to search users by their average thumb rating to see people I might want to follow more closely.

I see a lot of problems with this suggestion and no upside at all. Am I missing something? What is the intent of it? To weigh voting based on those criteria? It seems to aim to solve the problem of disagreement buries but I have yet to see a single instance of that (where it actually resulted in a bury threshold crossing).

I think that kind of thing may make more sense to separate out "not interested in topic" votes, a non-vote hide if you will, and that would address unpopular niche subjects better (e.g. crosswords), but I don't see how it would help the issues being discussed much.

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I would say that threats of personal harm are over the line, as would be calls for violence.

Those are illegal acts, and of course cross our lines. But that isn't even in the same city of what is being discussed (which at it's most personally harassing is just insensitive doubt cast on a personal story).

2 Replies

@Setanta,

You serious? Is this yet another one of those "moderate me please" calls that baffle me so much here (quite a few members have complained that we do not stop moderate them and I always wonder why they just don't do it themselves).

1 Reply

@Lash,

Lash wrote:

I didn't have the Abuzz experience, so perhaps those who did might speak to these ideas. Would they have made a difference in the demise of Abuzz... do you think member conflict resolution, interactions by rival groups, and administrative hierarchies are vitally important issues or keys to longevity for a site like ours?

I'd say definitely. The site had been moderated--nothing very vigorous, but there was some moderation. Then it was purchased by the NYT, and gradually all of the employees were let go. The site went to hell pretty quickly. Then, after September 11th, it filled up with predatory types who were looking for a fight. As fbaezer has pointed out, it eventually resolved into fights among the most thick-skinned members left. Some decent types soldiered on, but they were overwhelmed by the bottom-feeders who could and did say anything they liked, and made it nearly impossible to carry on a conversation.

0 Replies

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

PS: Just out of curiosity, how do you respond to Butrflynet's point that BBB, her mother, never asked for your protection, and that she doesn't appreciate your assuming the mantle of her knight in shining armor? When moralizing, there is such a thing as "none of your business". How is the protection of people who don't want to be protected any of your business?

And this is what I mean by "wananbe white knight", it's not just some random derogation for those with an eleemosynary streak but it is my term for those who clumsily take up the cause of abuse victims without them soliciting and often against their will and to their detriment.

Every time I see abuse victims I see overzealous males (invariably male) tripping overthemselves trying to posture themselves as a white knight and more often than not making things worse.

I've been there more than once myself, when my rage at abuse led me to inordinate zeal, wanting to attack abusers that victims just want to move on from. Drawing attention that was unwelcome and just generally being an insensitive ass about a sensitive subject. Inordinate zeal against abuse is a bull in the china shop of abuse victims and often re-victimizes through undue attention that the victim doesn't want, or simply for treating someone who doesn't want to feel like a victim anymore like a victim.

"Wannabe white knight" isn't a cute derogation to me, I have seen cases where they cause more harm than the alleged abusers. It's deeply wrongheaded.

0 Replies

@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Robert has some very loyal friends indeed.

Nonsense. This ad hominem you repeat is just an insult to the intellects of people who independently reach the same conclusions.

Nobody on this thread is any more my "friend" than you are. I don't give anyone any kind of "friendship loyalty" on able2know and don't think I get any either.

2 Replies

@Robert Gentel,

I don't know where you came up with that lunacy. It ought to be obvious that such remarks are not calling on you to save me from myself, but to save all of us from the trolls. I haven't entered into discussions about where lines ought to be drawn because that's a really difficult area. But admitting that i don't have an answer doesn't mean i'm not allowed to express the opinion that an answer must exist, and that it should be sought. Equally, admitting that i'm not personally competent to prevent a melt-down such as that which occured at Abuzz doesn't disqualify me from pointing out that there was a melt-down. I can't design and build an automobile, either--but i know pretty damned quick if the one i'm driving is a lemon.

1 Reply

Should able2know ban people for having untoward opinions?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know