Reminds me of playing football. The ref’s always seemed unable to see who threw the first punch, it was the person that retaliated that got the flag.
All too often on forums, we see them overrun with trolls and instead of dealing with the trolls to solve the problem the people that get run off or banned are the people who respond to them.
It’s a no win situation. If you’re silent they take over by sheer force of numbers, if you speak out against it, you get run off or banned.
Those are great points @DMK and you are right…I support what you’re saying.
Look folks - here is the deal. I am not ever going to be a censor of what content the public sees on the internet. I’m just not going to do it. No matter how loud people kick and scream, it’s not going to happen. So you are wasting your breath. My position is not going to change, for good reason.
There have been too many bans from a variety of platforms all across the internet. It’s getting worse and it’s becoming more high profile. Brick and mortar banks are now starting to ban people because of speech…and gun ownership. The envelope keeps getting pushed.
Some of you may recall that Alex Jones was recently banned across all major platforms. I personally have mixed feelings about Alex Jones but I was furious when that happened. Of course, the typically authoritarian left played to a conservative concept of free market enterprise being able to do whatever it wants within the confines of its property. We shouldn’t have let them get away with it because it was all about pushing the envelope and coordination among the tech giants to silence speech. They also crushed Alex Jones’ earning capability because of his speech. Unacceptable.
I have personally been banned on Facebook and Twitter on multiple occasions. Many of the folks here have as well. When I build a place it is designed to be a safe harbor for free speech. I’ve had plenty of my communities get chased off the internet and censored by ISPs. I’ve received very real threats from very real people. It comes with the territory. That’s why for the past 20 years of doing this I’ve had one guideline…and that is to not be an asshole. In that sense, it’s to generally avoid engaging in personal attacks and focus on attacking ideas. This is politics and sometimes tempers flare. I get that. That’s why I built the ignore function. It’s also why I’ll let large groups of folks have their own dedicated private group that’s invisible to anyone outside of that group. As you said earlier, people need to blow off steam.
Anyway…
If the trolling gets too out of hand then people will get a 1000 year ban. There have only been two bans here to date. It normally takes a lot to earn a ban. I take that very seriously because once the ban is in effect there is no coming back. When I ban someone I am shutting down their speech, permanently. I try to avoid it but will do it when necessary. When someone trolls a community too hard they are affectively shutting down the speech of everyone else and that can’t stand. We have one person right now who is on the cusp of getting a ban. Just because others share this particular person’s ideology doesn’t mean that they are up for getting a ban as well.
I hope all of this makes sense.
it’s your house, you make the rules, but do us a favor and lay them out clearly for all to see and enforce them evenly.
If you’re going to ban people for calling out anti Semitism and Racism while giving a voice to both you are actively supporting them.
If you’re going to provide a platform for the unrestricted posting of hateful lies intended to defame, and slander entire groups of innocent people, and ban people for calling the lies out, you have become their enabler.
You won’t do anything in threads that immediately become an off topic assault on ■■■■ or or conservatives, but state that such off topic posting is the one thing you will do something about.
No disrespect intended but we need some fairness in the moderation, and rules that are clear and have uniform enforcement if we’re going to have rules at all.
Thank you, Patriot. Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone wants the right to be heard. The bottom line is to do it in such a way as foster a positive result. No one gains from personal attacks, ever.
Also great points on this post. My challenge is people tend to react or say something totally off the wall which in fairness does tie my hands. If I get the reputation for quickly banning anyone and everyone over the slightest offense no one will want to come here either.
What I would really like to see happen is for folks not to react and let moderation take its course. I get that it’s hard to not respond when someone really ticks you off, but if I see two sides spitting at each other I’m not going to kick both people out. I’ll just let the fight cool down and people will move on. @TWR made a good point on this here:
It takes longer to see who threw the first punch. I am actually optimistic that this Perspective API will help to see that. It takes time for me and two volunteers to read every thread and try to sort out who did what. Often times, the first punch gets thrown on one thread and the retaliation takes place on another. That makes it very difficult to follow and only after a lot of reading and looking at time stamps do things begin to become clear.
So when do I get my apology and the admission that the post calling terrorists idiots should not have been flagged or silenced?
Look I’ve moderated forums off and on for twenty years so I do know a little about it.
Identifying the trolls and bomb throwers isn’t that difficult and doesn’t take a whole lot of time.
All you have to do is bring the posting history of the individual and it becomes real clear, real fast.
I appreciate the work and the required balance to keep a forum both open to all views, while maintaining some sanity.
I’ll say this. No forum I’ve ever read or participated lasted long when the trolls and haters were empowered and everyone else silenced except for a handful who’s sole purpose was to promote that point of view.
They are like rats and hyenas diving on a corpse and will such the life out of a forum very quickly.
The racists do it.
The Anit Semites do it.
ANTIFA absolutely does it.
BLM did it all over the internet.
Democrats teach courses in how to destroy forums and silence conservative thought, you can download the forumla and directions on several leftwing forums I won’t name, but they are not fringe sites, they are main stream highly touted democrat funded and supported sites.
Ha! You didn’t directly attack anyone. You did say that most of these people are idiots. In that sense, the Perspective API did exactly what it was supposed to. It warned you, you proceeded, a flag was issued, it was reviewed as being inflammatory to the discussion, the flag was sustained.
Was I also making a point? Yep! I got your attention fast, which further demonstrates that this process works.
And you know what? That is all you can do. You are following your heart.
I have to do that everyday, too. I get to second guess if I did it right or not. At the end of the day, all I have to rely on is… I did the BEST I could given the information I have and where my gut told me to go. (enter sleepless nights, right?)
So, my friend. I feel I have cleared the air with you. You know where I stand and I know where you stand. My choices and your choices. Not many are willing to parry, are they? My respect to you.
You are correct, I do know who the problem children are. Let’s come to a mutual understanding.
One of the things that I really try to avoid is hypocrisy.
I’ll give you an example, I am not the biggest fan of Islam. I don’t get aggravated when I see posts that are critical of Islam or Islamic countries. I think many here are on the same page as me with this.
As a Catholic, I get aggravated when I see negative posts about Catholicism. I let them stand because people have a right to discuss the issues of the day and express how they really feel about a particular religion. Why should I be a hypocrite and ban people for making anti-Catholic posts? I don’t like them, but I leave them alone. The same applies to anti-Christian threads…of which there are very few.
This brings us to the ■■■■■■ / Israel posting which is generating a lot of contention. If I am not banning or limiting speech on the above mentioned topics, why should I give topics related to Judaism or Israel special treatment? I think that would be hypocritical administration of this forum. People have a right to discuss and hold an opinion. I’m good with letting those opinions and discussions stand.
What I think people are getting torqued up about are the conspiracy theories. I think it might be best to create a specific category for conspiracy theories. I can also tweak some of the internal settings so that some categories are automatically suppressed from the home page. This doesn’t prevent people from having a conversation but it’s not in everyone’s face. It also keeps conspiracy theory out of the main news categories.
Thoughts?
I understand you dilemma. As someone who is extreme Constitutional Conservative with strong libertarian tendency,
I see what you’re going through. Sadly if authoritarians ever regain power they will make that decision for you.
What I mean is they will use a certain element to censor and shut down sites such as this from American public.
This is precisely my point. What that certain element don’t realize they will be used as tools for other certain authoritarians to shut you/us down. My opinion of them isn’t very favorable to say the least. It’s their ignorance that will be our downfall…to be uses as a weapon against us who opposes them and their authoritarian tendencies.
Sadly all to many in our society thinks this is perfectly acceptable…while ignoring their own hateful writings and propaganda. If anything it’s in my opinion we are now heading in uncharted territory then none of us had witnessed in our lifetime…or possibly in American 240 year history.
That alone should have raised flags throughout our society. So I don’t know what’s worst…silencing of Alex Jones…or the lack of public outcry.
Now for those that promote their own hatred.
You’re making their job easier for them. It will be you that will give them excuse to silence us, silence us from ability to challenge em in the future. Make no mistake, what happen in 2016 they will never allow that to happen ever again, that’s if they ever regain the power they need to make this fundamental alteration in our society.
Now I don’t care what you do, it’s a free country and I’m fighting to keep it that way. But damn…you’re making my job that much harder.
I hope this makes sense.
It makes sense to me, Conan and well said.
Please pardon my ignorance but what is unlisted?
Erp. Nevermind. I think I figured it out. 
The only person I called an idiot were terrorists. If you can’t understand that i can’t help you and this begins to look like highly biased moderation and an intent to intimidate me.
You want to run a board like that go right ahead but we both know where it will end up.
Nobody asked you to ban discussion of the topics. What you were asked to do was put some moderation in force for the personal attacks and you were warned that giving a voice to that kind of hate was pure poison for forums.
Honest criticism should never be banned, but perpetuating hateful lies and giving them cover under the guise of free speech while dropping a hammer on those that call it out for what it does isn’t being fair or even handed it’s becoming an enabler of those spreading hate filled lies.
None of us that I know of including myself has ever asked much less insisted that you limit open and honest discussions in any way.
By terrorists are you referring to members of this board with whom you disagree, or where you specifically talking about terrorists?
That’s exactly what was done.
No, I was replying to the OP exactly as I told you in PM.
You should be able to figure that out simply by reading it, I shouldn’t have to explain it a third time.
I did edit it to make it painfully obvious to what I was replying.
I see. I’ll remove the flag. Watch your tone with me in a public setting. Thanks.