What will your reaction be if you are suspended?

So it is probably for the best that he'll move on. I think being ignored would in the end be worse than banning him from his perspective.

If there was one thing Hawkeye was always good for, it was exposing the hypocrisy of those who loudly proclaim to be tolerant of other's opinions, to be seeking open, rational discussion, to favor "dialogue" over conflict, etc., eh?

His mere appearance would often trigger a long series of abusive monlogues, seriatum, each one receiving 5-10 thumbs up for mutual reinforcement of the gang attack.

It doesn't stop even after he gets banned. He's gunna be missed as a target of morally outraged aggression, sho nuff.

The guy was so "intolerable," that, as has already been noted elsewhere, he would always attract a large number of posters to loudly express their intolerance. He wasn't just "ignored." He was a scapegoat, a "human sacrifice" to appease the PC gods.

agreed - for many posters

He would not have found himself alone in this forum. There were always people who were willing to participate in the threads he started, either to discuss the issue at hand or to heap abuse on him.

He was hardly a saint and everyone here probably could find a thread where they had a minor or major run-in with him. I will have to read the alleged horrid posts before I concede he is guilty of all that he has been accused of. Not because I think too much of the guy to believe it, but because I know how this place works.

In the end, the good things he brought to A2K are what they were. No one should be forced to like, say nice things about or converse with anyone in this forum. The people who got off on being part of a pack that harassed him in every thread he started didn't target him alone, and they're not likely to stop such crap now that he's gone. (After all, orolloy is still here and so is BillRM.) One of three things will happen: 1) They will self-regulate, 2) They will get suspended and either knock it off or leave 3) They will drive other members out and they will then either have one big echo chamber to enjoy or start turning on each other.

Was just thinking about that this morning, your experience with Hawkeye is completely different that that of many others and that you being a white male is a huge part of it. The notion that he was nice till attacked is pure fiction. I could dig up hundreds of posts where he is his usual toxic, snide and angry self without anyone attacking him first.

And blacks, gays, and women are people he clearly takes a very dim view of and would treat those people with distain frequently whether or not they "attacked" him. He was constantly making veiled racist and homophobic remarks intended to offend the minorities he disliked and would go out of his way to do it when he was talking to them. Using outright slurs was a line we always had and it should have been enforced a long time ago.

Just because as a white male who is much closer to his position on mens rights than most of us you weren't a target of it doesn't mean it didn't exist and that he didn't often go out of his way to make a racist or sexist remark to the gays, blacks and women that he holds such low regard for.

Yes, he was often attacked by similarly idiotic people with similarly poor self control but the notion that he was in any way reasonable until then is just plain fiction. There were plenty of people who were polite to him but that he'd latch onto and attack with an obsession. You should see his absolutely nutty rants and messages to me, alternating between telling me how much of a Nazi I am and expressing his admiration and desire to meet me, it was a completely nutty fixation that did not start with me attacking him but rather from me ignoring him, in most of the threads about the site changes you can watch me stop responding to him and he'll just ratchet up the attacks and hysteria. I have never wanted to take any action against a user for attacking me (I don't particularly mind it and don't want to deal with the accusations of impartiality that it would bring so I've long been completely fair game and nobody has ever been banned for saying anything to or about me, and you can ask some here they have gone our of their way to try to make that happen) but after being away from the forum a few years I can see marked effect that he has had in driving away many more points of view than he brought to the table, and when I found out he had dropped the veil for his hate speech that was a rule that I would have enforced against anyone who used such speech.

He was a net negative to all but a few people who to just not have seen the toxic presence he has had that no other user in the site's history has come close to rivaling. This is absolutely not because his views are unpopular, there are many other users here with unpopular views and yes they are sometimes attacked unfairly but most of them simply are not the monumental asshole that Hawkeye was routinely to the classes of people he disliked. I always stood up for him and his right to be here for around 7 years (even though people called me all sorts of names for doing so and quit the site over it etc) because though I don't see any value in his contributions (he's not particularly good at arguing and ruins more edifying discussion than he creates) I wanted the place to be inclusive but he's not suspended because of his silly positions, but because of incessantly arguing them in a toxic tone and devolving to hate speech in his rhetoric.

Everything has its limits, what would you do differently? Let this be a site where we get to call each other fag or nigger just cause you miss some of his posts?

When the new platform launches there will be some who make communities that tolerate that level of discourse, but I don't want this to be one and have been repeatedly surprised at your criticism of the enforcement of a rule not tolerating direct hate speech at fellow members.

All of those posters who just flood the forum with high volume and low coherence are. Users who come to just flood us with gibberish are not welcome anymore either.

Again, there will be other forums that will allow whatever they want on the new platform but this one is going to evolve towards its original vision of being a friendly place to learn (so many of the frivolous and chat threads will need to move to the chat and banter communities too when those are up).

I have put up threads that are chatty and frivolous, often because there is so much repetitive bickering on the political, religious and science threads that I sometimes need another reason to be here. I am looking forward to the new incarnation, so that we can experiment with different approaches and see what works best.

I for one am glad to see you back, edgar, and love your quirky, dry humour.

I look forward to joining the chat and banter group, and hope that many old faces make their way back for a bit of fun and gossip.

Thanks. I believe anything should be jokeable, if handled correctly.

Hawk and I were about as far apart on men's rights as possible and I routinely challenged him and others on various threads, but there is no doubt that he was aware that I am white and male and it likely impacted our interaction. Nor have I ever been tolerant of hate speech. I do believe that the best response to hateful speech is more speech. Ignoring people like Hawk doesn't make them go away. I love the ignore feature and use it regularly to make my experience better. I don't feel the need to expose myself to people who provide no value, but I don't feel I should prevent others from interacting if they want.

That was my lesson when I used to scold Slappy, it was his take on things. He turned my thinking a bunch of degrees. I'm not for hate speech, never was, but I get a comic/cartoon using words and... ta da, even drawings. I'm mixed on the Hebdo and prior episode in Denmark, did not join in on making Mohammed drawings as suggested on a2k by a person I like, and I'm moderately good at drawing (it was re free comic speech); did back the Hebdo people, not all that far but understood it, them doing it, and the woman didn't mind or so I read; I think they knew her.
As we all know sometimes a word depends on who says it and why, as victims can and sometimes do turn it back their way, pride can work. I think wisdom, not that I have it, is in part empathy.

Which brings up books and learning about books. I think we'll need a book site on the platform.

I predict more than one book forum in the next incarnation, because we read for differing reasons and have differing conclusions about what we read.

I liked reading slappy. Sorry he left.

I did not draw any pictures on Mohammed for the same reason I don't draw insulting pictures of Buddha or Jesus. Why hurt the innocent members of a religion's feelings?

Me too, as the reason.

On a book site, not yet understanding how things will evolve, I'll bet you're right.
Books are innumerable but at the same time fairly precious, all considered.
The number of off shoots boggles my mind.

Sorry if I misrepresented your position, I had seen you as disagreeing with him but being much more tolerant of some of his positions than I am.

I have similar skin in terms of speech I would prefer allowed and that is my personal preference, in the new site people like Hawkeye will have plenty of available communities both because there will be the option for more than one approach but also because people will have better tools to avoid him and we won't have to remove people as much.

So on the new platform I'm going to make my own anything goes communities for that. But there is a flip cost to this when you have but one available community. The majority of people are not interested in such discourse and we lose more points of view by not setting that as a standard than by having it.

In terms of a debate I think the best approach to such speech is countering it with other speech but in terms of making the most viable community to foster debate I think that to not set standards will cede the communities to their lowest common denominators and end up with fewer points of view represented in the first place. The classes of people Hawk disliked also have low representation here and I think that allowing the tone of discussion to degrade is going to reduce the pool of people and the viewpoints represented.

If you only like Max Brand westerns, you sure won't join a forum of sci/fi fanatics.

Yeah, and though this site quickly evolved away from my original intentions (much more about education and learning was the goal) I was fine letting the community chat about what they wanted.

As it grew the problem becomes that some things are not interesting to some people (e.g. some don't like the politics at all, some hate the word games) so one of the keys to the new approach is that it is a community of communities so there will be the general chat community (probably several of them) and there will be the word games community and all sorts of subject-speicfic communities. That will both better foster those subject discussions as well as allow a2k to try to be more about its initial goal when there will be the many other communities serving the various interests that a2k has thus far tried to serve all-in-one.

The kind of community that here evolved I liken to the threads that attempted to write novels by allowing rotating input from as many individuals as cared to join in. There was never a cohesive theme or structure. None ever got far.

I never read Max Brand, presently forgetting who I did read (my deceased uncle's westerns, himself an interesting man) the most.. but The Virginian, Owen Wister, got to me at thirteen. (I think she sat on his lap.)
I'm no sci fi fan but I plan to order an a2k writer's book, have always liked her as a writer.

So, this change could be very very interesting.

Max Brand also created Dr Kildare, under his own name, of Frederick Faust.

Given that many subjects may subdivide, I like the outlook re Robert's idea.