I haven’t noticed anything like that. I mean, who else is calling for ethnic cleansing, ffs.
I mean, if other people really are making the same kinds of posts, I’m okay with asking them to stop, I just legit haven’t seen anyone else behave the way NBZ has.
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That’s just a regular old natural death though, certainly not a call for violence.
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Here you go, with the post NBZ was replying to for context:
Coasterbrad’s post has 4 likes. One of them is from ■■■■■■■■■■■
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No way that post deserved a ban imo. I guess we should all sit around and pretend that Trump supporters are not loathsome pieces of shit?
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Personally I find it harder and harder to be even lightly civil towards the administration and anyone who supports it. Every day it gets worse and every day those who support it become a bit more horrible.
None of us have lived through a time period like this before and it is fairly extreme compared to all that came before it.
Not making excuses for anyone just saying lots of people are extremely frustrated and that can manifest itself in different ways.
I suspect if we told January 2016 22 pol what happened over the next 34 months almost everyone would assume people would have lit the country on fire in protest. Instead they have been so perpetually obscene that nobody protests anything any more. We live in dangerous times and it is only going to get worse.
I do not think a lot of people here ever bought into the Chezlaw style “Just talk to them civilly” rhetoric. So what else is there? What I am saying is I think a lot of us are extremely frustrated by what is going on and have different ways of showing it.
It is clear BruceZ is bothering a group of people here and I understand their position. I just wish BruceZ could and try to couch his frustration in less overt ways.
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I don’t really care what happens to NotBruceZ, but very strongly disagree with this. Permas should require a vote for sure and I think more than a majority vote.* I don’t think we should have to have some precisely laid out procedure, but someone (mod or not) who wants NBruce banned should make a poll and try to get people to vote in it and then mods should be judging whether or not the will of the community is clear enough.
*not counting like trivially obvious spam or something
I would like to formally report cuserounder for shaming/dehumanizing the “mentally ill.” There is nothing wrong with that, as far as I am aware, and we even have a mental health thread where people share very personal things. I do not feel comfortable sharing, nor should anyone else here, any details about my personal mental health while the moderators here show such disdain/hostility for people with mental problems.
bruce, get better my dude, there’s nothing wrong with you.
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There’s a difference between people making the occasional poorly-considered post out of frustration and NBZ constantly trying to get a rise out of people with edgy shit.
All of you guys playing this “gotcha” game with cuse’s posts are not very persuasive.
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The simple fact of the matter, is this site has always run democratically, we took a vote (twice) and the results came out decidedly one way. Cuse disagrees with those results and acts anyway. I vote to demod.
I think there is good sense in acknowledging that we all need a place to express and process and simply share where we are at and what we are thinking and feeling. Sharing with another living person is sometimes the missing ingredient to us ever growing beyond the things that trouble us.
My question to you with this or similar situations is what you would like for a community like this to do differently. Not a goal, but concrete steps that are both within this community’s power and you believe are appropriate (which don’t necessarily overlap).
There is also the coda that you cannot help someone who does not want help. If you keep coming to my home and laying out needles, you’re belligerent, the only thing you talk about is ethnic cleansing for people you despise, yeah, you will probably be banned from game night. I don’t wish you harm, but I also have to be considerate to myself and anyone else involved. That’s just practicing healthy boundaries.
In my view, Unstuck is not the appropriate place for where Bruce is at, but per my question above, maybe I’m just missing a meaningful process that helps Bruce and fosters the culture and community we want.
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Redacted for privacy.
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There have been votes on perma-banning him, and I did not perma-ban him. I gave him a 24 hour slap on the wrist. That’s well within the powers the community entrusted to me as a moderator. In fact, I’m pretty sure the last time this came up there were suggestions for flagging posts, giving warnings, escalating temp bans, etc and seeing where things went. So here we are.
You want me demodded, start a poll, as I’ve already said. I’ve been pretty clear about my principles on this and acting > demodded > doing nothing. Hence, I’m taking a stand on this.
And you can keep talking about me being undemocratic or fascistic or whatever, but it’s ridiculous. Every chance I’ve had to take power I’ve passed on, every chance I’ve had to make this site community owned and run I’ve tried to make that happen, and the one moderating decision that is controversial I’ve actively participated in numerous discussions on and immediately announced to the community for full transparency, while encouraging anyone who disagrees with me to start a poll to demod me if they wish to.
That’s all cool. And it’s not that I don’t want him banned, it’s just that I’m fairly indifferent and somewhat ambivalent.
The whole point of having moderators is to delegate certain responsibilities and trust their judgement. There’s no way this place can function if we’re requiring (or insisting on) full direct democracy in every little decision.
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The post calling trump voters alien is totally fine. Many other posters have said much worse.
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I think our personalities are pretty different in this regard, which is fine, but I’d encourage you to spend a minute or two thinking about the ways in which letting this posting go could go wrong.
All it takes is one person acting on it and it will have been a grave error to let it go. And the butterfly effect applies here. For example, one person here could decide, “Hey, that’s a cool way to talk to try to trigger the other side. I’m going to go post like that on CP.” Then one person on CP could react to it by deciding that leftists are violent and dangerous, and take a deep dive into 4chan or 8chan or wherever right wing extremists are posting these days, and turn violent.
Now, at some point you can argue that it’s no longer NotBruceZ’s fault and it’s not our responsibility to prevent that. I would argue that allowing violent rhetoric to take hold and be used and spread is not going to lead to good things happening, but can lead to bad things happening, so we should do our best to prevent it.
We have free speech in America, and I’m a pretty strong believer in the First Amendment as a journalism major… but you can’t go around making threats, you can’t say bomb on an airplane and you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, and for good reasons.
Do I think it’s likely that NotBruceZ does something violent? No. Do I think it’s likely that he inspires someone to be violent? No. But if there’s a 1 in 1,000 chance that someone as a direct or indirect result of those posts continuing to be made walks into a Wal Mart and kills 20 people and injures 30 others, that’s a risk I’m not willing to take if I have the power to nip it in the bud.
Maybe it’s 1 in 100,000, maybe it’s 1 in 500, I have no idea. I’m not equipped to make those estimates… But regardless, it’s not a risk I’m willing to take. In journalism school we were taught that in deciding when to publish something from an editorial standpoint, we should make our best attempt to balance who it helps and who it hurts. I actually come down pretty far on the side of publishing controversial stuff when there’s a case to be made that it helps significantly more people than it hurts.
NotBruceZ’s rhetoric doesn’t help anyone, and has the potential to cause harm. So for me it’s an easy call.
Yet he went the route of asking the community what they thought. And when most of those who offered an opinion didn’t agree with him, he took it upon himself to act anyway. Banning a poster for (what is ultimately subjectively) offensive content is not a little thing.
As others have said, there is a problem here and NBZ is not it.
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Not in the context of saying that day that they wanted to start using the language of ethnic cleansing, and not in the context of having already had numerous threads started, PMs sent, etc asking them to tone down their rhetoric.
Temp banning is well within the powers of any mod, it’s not like I perma’d him. If I’m a problem, start a thread to demod me. If the community feels I’m a bad mod, then so be it. I’m actively encouraging people to express that opinion, and suggested that I should have to carry a significant majority to stay on as a mod… so I don’t see how I’m a problem, but you have every right to your opinion.
Hopefully even people who disagree with the modding can see where I’m coming from on this and respect that, though. We live in scary times, and I’m not going to wake up in six months to news of a mass shooting, then find out a few days later it was inspired by a NotBruceZ post that could have been prevented if I had taken action sooner. I have a strong conviction on what the right thing to do is here, so I’m doing it and letting the chips fall where they may.
It’s time for this community to adopt standards on what sort of rhetoric is not allowed and ban worthy. So far we’re doing a very poor job of it in my opinion.
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